Torchwood LA: Retcon
by Independent Dude
Summary: Torchwood/24/Dr. Who/House/Eureka crossover. Third story in the "Torchwood: LA" saga. In a little Oregon town called Eureka, aliens sabotage an important manned space mission. Gwen Cooper, Jack Bauer, and the Torchwood Seven team are called in by the government to investigate, and we finally meet the team's science advisor. Violence/language/minor character death.
1. Cold Open

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 1: Cold Open

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

 _ **Previously, in the Torchwood Seven universe…**_

 **GWEN COOPER**

"Gwen Cooper," said the woman, offering her hand. "I'm with Torchwood."

"I myself was the junior member of Torchwood Three…I am in Los Angeles, having been invited by your government to set up a Torchwood office…"

Gwen looked at Jack…"My boss in Cardiff was a superior leader," she said. "Everything I know about Torchwood I learned from him. However, his strategy for personnel recruitment left a lot to be desired…I intend to change that. I want the best…"

 **JACK BAUER**

Kim looked over at her dad…"So, you're a man in black now?"

"Jack Bauer. Formerly commander of CTU Los Angeles"…She closed the folder and put it back in the case. "Yes, you'll do," she said.

"And the government is okay with me being your second in command?"…"They wanted an American," shrugged Gwen.

 **CELL 114**

Bauer opened the folder and saw photographs of bodies…"This is the Ottawa bombing, isn't it?"

"They're called Cell 114…Sleeper cells, specializing in infiltration, disruption, and sabotage."…"Muslim extremists?" asked Jack…"No. Not Muslims," said Gwen, shaking her head.

"If you were 114, the needle would never have been able to penetrate your skin…The 114 do not get sick, they do not get minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, and they do not go to hospitals or doctors' offices. And that's another way we can spot them."

 **TORCHWOOD SEVEN**

"Welcome to Torchwood Seven."

"Jack, Lois Habiba. Lois, Jack Bauer."

"Are you even a doctor? Because you sure as hell don't sound like one."…"She's not," said House. "But I am."

"His name is Adam Mitchell," said Ryan…"He claims to have worked for Henry Van Statten at his compound in Utah."

Jack, here's two more of your team. Jack Bauer, meet Roy Caftan…our resident computer expert and acting science chief… And this, of course, is Major Ken Ryan, our head of security."

Jack looked over to Caftan's body…Ryan was kneeling and checking for a pulse. He looked up at Jack and shook his head.

Barin shot three of his own bullets into Ryan…Ryan never had a chance, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

"Our head technology person is currently on loan to Torchwood Six, helping them sort through the wreckage of a crashed alien ship," Gwen explained almost apologetically. "She should be back, what, Friday?"

 _ **The following takes place twenty-one months after the events of**_ **24: Day Eight** _ **and fifteen months after day five of**_ **Torchwood: Children of Earth.** _ **Events occur in an alternate continuity which does not include**_ **Torchwood: Miracle Day** _ **or**_ **24: Live Another Day.**

 _ **All characters are the property of their respective authors. All original characters and events which occur in this story are mine.**_

The hood over her head wasn't totally opaque, so she could tell that they had just moved her inside. She felt the air conditioning, a welcome change from the stifling outdoor weather. And she heard the click of a light switch as her captors frog-marched her through at least one room before coming to a stop. Roughly, they spun her around and forced her to sit against the base of a wall, the plastic ties on her wrists preventing her from reaching back and arresting her descent.

Before she could grunt in pain, the hood was off. Long, reddish blonde hair spilled out as she gulped in a deep breath. She was sitting in a stone floored room against a cinderblock wall; she could now feel the coolness of the floor begin to seep through her jeans. The room was barren except for an empty wooden cable spool in the center and a bare bulb fixture hanging down from the ten-foot ceiling.

"Are you thirsty?" She recognized the man who spoke. It was one of her abductors: the one who had called himself "Jim Ricker." He had dark hair and a permanent squint, and he was squatting down at her side to hand her one of those water bottles with the squirt cap.

She turned her head away. She had read somewhere – or maybe she had seen it on TV – an account about a kidnapping victim whose life had been spared by his captors because he had made a conspicuous effort to _not_ look at their faces. She knew it was pointless, having already seen them at the café, but maybe if she tried now it would make a difference.

It didn't. "Hey!" Ricker said, getting up and moving to her other side so that he was in her new field of vision. "If we wanted to hurt you, we would've," he said, like a math teacher at the end of his patience reciting an axiom to an underperforming student. He handed her the water bottle again. "Are you thirsty?" he repeated.

She didn't reply. Ricker took that as a "yes" and pressed the bottle into her bound hands. After a moment's hesitation, she took it and sprayed about an ounce of water into her mouth, then tilted the bottle and took a bigger swig once she had swallowed the first.

"Wh…what are you going to do with me?" she asked him as he took back the water bottle.

Ricker raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "I don't know," he said, and suddenly she had the strangest feeling that Ricker wasn't being sarcastic. "Hey, Cole," he said, raising his voice and calling to someone outside the room, "What _are_ we supposed to do with her now?"

"We wait for Bauer."

The man who had spoken strode into the room. He was a short, blond man with piercing blue eyes. She recognized him as the one who had called himself "Cole Ortiz." Ortiz had been the leader of the group that had taken her back at the café. He walked like a soldier: careful, as if entering a potential ambush, yet confident in his ability to fight his way out of one. He also maintained a discrete distance from her as he walked around the room.

She'd caught him with her heel, right on the instep, when he grabbed her. She had done it so fast, it had surprised him and made him let her go. It had certainly surprised her. When she'd dared a look back, she had seen Ortiz hopping on his other foot and knocking over a nearby table. Even Ricker had been stunned into inaction by her bold escape. _And had that alley I ducked down not been a dead end,_ she thought ruefully, _it would have been a_ successful _escape, and I'd be sitting in the departure lounge at the airport, not tied up in a warehouse like Nancy Drew._ At the time, she had almost felt sheepish, turning around to face them and their guns.

Ricker stood up in deference to his boss and moved away. Ortiz stopped his circumnavigation of the room, then put his hand on his hips and faced her. He was looking down at her with a measuring expression, and was about to say something, when someone followed him into the room.

"She has to watch this," said the newcomer, a thin dark-haired man in his late-twenties or early thirties. It was the one who called himself "Arlo Glass," the final member of the trio who had abducted her ( _Dear God,_ she suddenly thought, _please tell me they're not using their_ real _names!_ ). Glass walked to the center of the room and set an ipad onto the wooden spool as if it were a table. He used a stand built in to the back of the tablet to prop it up. The screen was blank, except for an enlarged video play icon from a media player. "We're not supposed to be in the room when she does," said Glass, as he turned back to his compatriots.

"Let's go, then," said Ortiz. He nodded to his other two team members, and they walked out of the room. Ortiz took one last look at their prisoner, and then followed.

As soon as they were gone, she was halfway up and scooted over to the makeshift table. She grabbed the ipad with her bound hands and began searching through the programs on it at high speed. Unfortunately, as she quickly discovered, all of the tablet's wireless and communications software had been either disabled or removed. In fact, most of the ipad's standard programs had been deleted – except for the media player. The play icon sat in the middle of the screen, almost mocking her.

This was unexpected. _Somehow, they're doing it wrong,_ she thought. She was no expert on kidnapping – after all, this was her first - but even she knew that the ransom video was not meant to be shown to the victim. _What am I supposed to do, write a review for the Sun Times?_ she thought: _Gene, I liked this film. I give it two thumbs up, cut off, and mailed to my family_. She almost chuckled aloud, when she had a sudden, chilling realization:

 _What if I'm not the victim?_

It was terrifying, but also terrifyingly possible. _My God, I still have my security clearance,_ she thought. _They could want me to do something for them, steal something…What if all this was just to get my attention, and they're holding somebody I care about?_ She looked at the ipad again. "Mom and Dad!"she said aloud. _Jack…_ she thought.

With all the ramifications of this frightening new prospect running through her head, one can imagine how upset she was getting. So one can consequentially imagine the complete and utter surprise that was experienced when one Dr. Tess Fontana, radio astronomer, scientist, and former glorified government contractor, touched the video play icon and saw…

Herself.

"Hey, me, it's you," said Tess-on-the-screen. "Hey, um, buckle up, because this is going to take some explaining…"

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	2. Three Months Ago, on a Friday

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 2: Three Months Ago, on a Friday

 _Three months earlier…_

Tess stood in the baggage claim area, resisting the urge to hop up onto the now dormant conveyer for a better vantage point. She settled instead for just standing on tiptoe periodically as she scanned the crowd for her ride. The man's picture, emailed by Gwen just a few minutes earlier, was still up on her phone.

She'd heard that the new second in command was another ex-military type: a real hardass, even worse than Ken could be at times. _I'd better spot him before he sees me_ , Tess thought. _If I let him see me first, he'll probably nag me about "situational awareness" for the rest of –_

"Dr. Fontana?" she heard. _Damn._

She turned around and found herself staring up, but not too far up, at the speaker. He was about five foot nine, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. Gray tinges around his temples helped her place his age at somewhere in the forties, but he had that look of wiry strength and military bearing which marked him as someone still very, very dangerous. She glanced down at her phone for reference, but she already knew that she had made contact with the right person.

"Dr. Fontana, my name is Jack Bauer," he told her in a pleasant voice, extending his hand. "I'm the new XO."

"Pleased to meet you," Tess said by rote as she shook his hand.

"Same here," said Bauer. His handshake was firm, though not too firm, as if he had precisely calibrated his grip for a woman. "Although I'm sorry it had to be under these circumstances."

"Yeah," said Tess. "What…how…how did it happen?" she asked, feeling her eyes begin to water as she thought of her two coworkers again. She had been in the Outback with Bruce and his Torchwood Six team, playing rock-paper-scissors for various parts from a downed alien ship, when she had received Gwen's secure text: _Russians attacked Hub. Roy, Ken dead. Get back. Now._ She had been so shocked she had nearly fainted, and not from the heat.

"Not here," said Bauer, waving her inquiry off with a hand while looking furtively around. "Wait until we get into the truck."

"Right," Tess said, wiping her eye. There was not much to wipe. _At least I cried myself out on the flight,_ she thought bitterly.

Bauer was getting back to business. "Do you have anything _heavy_?" he asked _,_ using the agreed-upon code word for "alien." Tess noticed now that he had somehow acquired a baggage cart before approaching her, and was looking at the pair of bags lined up at her feet.

"Just in the blue suitcase," she said, pointing it out. "Our friends in Australia promised to ship the really heavy stuff by boat as soon as they can."

Bauer picked up the suitcase and had it on the cart before Tess had even finished speaking. He put it at the very far end of the cart, then put her other bag on the cart and began pushing it toward the parking garage. Tess noticed that Bauer was keeping his arms fully extended and locked as he pushed the cart as far out in front of himself as he could. Unfortunately that made the cart harder to steer, and he promptly crashed it into a drinking fountain, spilling the bags onto the floor.

Tess rolled her eyes. "I said heavy, not radioactive!" she said, as she ran up to help put all of her overturned luggage back onto the cart.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	3. So I Says to Myself

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 3: So I Says to Myself…

 _Back in the present…_

"If you're watching this video, it means you have left the employ of an organization known as Torchwood…"

Tess stared open-mouthed at the image of herself on the screen. For it was her. Sure, the hairstyle her other self was wearing was different, but she immediately recognized it as one she had abandoned a few months ago. And the jacket and shirt combination she was wearing in the video was an outfit she owned and had only recently put away for the season. In all other aspects – the face, the voice, the posture – Tess might as well have been looking into a mirror. She was so stunned by this revelation that, despite the perilous events that had led to the circumstances in which she currently found herself, she could do nothing but just sit and watch as her doppelganger tried to explain what the hell was going on.

* * *

"…Of course, you won't remember any of this, because you have had your memory wiped," Tess' onscreen avatar continued. "Now, if you're watching this, it means that they, for whatever reason, want you back. Guess there's no accounting for taste," Tess-on-the-screen winked at the camera. "You've been stoplossed. This video is meant to get you back up to speed on the whole Torchwood thing, and what you need to do, and remember, and what Torchwood does…and…Aargh!" she said, grabbing her head and shaking it in frustration. "I can't think of what to say!" She looked up and slightly to the left of the camera. "Jack, what did you put in yours?"

"Stop," said a voice, and the frame of the video moved slightly, the first indication given the entire time that the camera had been handheld. "Relax, take a deep breath." The voice was loud enough, relative to Tess', to prove that it indeed was coming from the cameraman. The voice was husky, yet at the same time clear and mellifluous, with a perfect timbre. It was the kind of timbre that was so perfect that, if one looked up the word "timbre" in the dictionary, one would expect to see a picture of this Jack person's voice next to the definition.

"The first thing you should do," continued Jack the Camera Guy, "is establish trust with yourself. Tell yourself some facts that only you could know. Then you can talk about Torchwood."

Tess nodded. She took a deep breath, then looked straight into the camera and began. "When you were eleven, you were secretly glad that you placed fourth in our district at the State Junior Science Fair, because you were tired of giving up your Saturdays to compete. And it was _you_ who broke the remote to the television in the Physics Department lounge at Heidelberg and didn't tell anybody!" She paused, then drew herself up and continued in a softer voice: "And when the only man you've ever loved told you that he was breaking up with you so that you wouldn't get hurt, all you could think to say was 'Too late.'"

The camera moved slightly. Tess looked away from it. Camera guy Jack could be heard letting out a sigh. A moment of awkwardness hung in the air.

Finally, Tess composed herself. "Now, the best way to explain about Torchwood…" she said, straightening her posture again. "Your name is Dr. Tess Fontana. You hold PhD's in physics, astronomy, and communications theory, as well as a Double-Violet clearance level from the Department of Defense. You have worked at Area 51. For more than a year, you ran the top-secret Section Five research department at Global Dynamics' corporate headquarters in Eureka. For the last two presidential administrations, you have been on the short list of people to call if Earth was ever contacted by an alien race." She leaned forward into the camera. "And that's the stuff they let you _remember_!"

Tess settled back. It was possible to see that she was sitting on a thinly padded, cheap vinyl couch of the kind one would find in a college dorm lounge. "Seriously," she said. "Torchwood is a top secret government organization. They are an elite team, dedicated to planetary –"

"Elite, my left foot," someone said. The camera panned to the left, where a young black woman was standing at a sink and washing out a coffee maker. "An 'elite team' would tell somebody when they used the last filter."

"Lois," said Tess.

"Hey, Tess," said Lois, without looking her way. Then she did turn and look Tess' way, but only for an instant, and without lifting her eyes from what she was doing. "Oh, Tess. Gwen is looking for you. She had a few questions about your report on last week's Hoix incident."

"Lois," repeated Tess, this time getting the young woman's attention. "I'm doing my video." She pointed at Jack and the camera.

Lois looked at the camera and instantly became self-conscious. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" She put down the plastic part she was cleaning and put her hand up to cover her face. "So sorry!" she said again, as she fast walked past Tess and out of frame.

"Lois Habiba, everybody," said Tess to the camera, "our personnel manager and super admin. She's really the one who keeps this place running." She smiled and nodded in the direction Lois had gone. "Now, about Torchwood…"

"Tess?" another voice rang out. This time, the camera panned to the right to reveal a short brunette woman of about thirty-five. She was looking at a document on a tablet. "Do you really mean to say this in your report? That it's your theory that the Hoix mating ritual involves group sex?"

"Gwen!" said Tess, after coughing in surprise. "Gwen, come here! I'm doing my retcon video!" She beckoned to the brunette to come over to her.

"Oh, good, you're finally getting round to that," said Gwen with an aside glance to the camera. She walked over to the couch.

Tess was unperturbed. "This is Gwen Cooper, your boss," she said to the camera, pulling Gwen down to sit next to her and giving her a tight shoulder hug.

"Hello, Tess," Gwen waved to the camera. "Long time no see!"

"Oh, Gwen!" said Tess, "I almost forgot." She turned to face Gwen on the couch. She raised her left hand, and placed her right hand out as if getting ready to take an oath. Gwen didn't seem to know what Tess was doing, but she played along and put her hand under Tess' as if holding an imaginary stack of bibles. "I solemnly swear that I, Tess Fontana, have _not_ left a Trojan horse in the Torchwood computer system that will lock down the base and can only be deactivated by reciting the collected poems of Emily Dickinson. Nor have I implanted a virus that needs to be read the poems of Sylvia Plath, or Maya Angelou, or LOOK! Look at Jack!" She pointed at the cameraman. "He's making his ' _That's a potential scenario?!_ ' face!" She burst out laughing. Gwen did, too.

"No, I'm not!" said Jack.

"You _are_ , Jack!" said Gwen. She clapped her hands mirthfully at the sight.

While this was going on, a young man in a rasta hat was walking up behind the couch. He waited until Gwen and Tess had stopped laughing, then he reached around and hugged the redheaded scientist. "Hey, you, I want my body back!" he said, in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

"ADAM! _"_ Tess' squee of delight was even louder than the one she had given Gwen. She turned around and hugged him around his neck.

"Adam," said Gwen in acknowledgement. "Rocking the _Terminator_ impression."

" _Total Recall,_ " said Jack. Gwen just stuck her tongue out at him.

"You know, that scene at the end of the original _Total Recall_ was so medically bogus," said a new voice. The camera turned to the right and picked up an older man, about forty-five, who was wearing a white lab coat and walking with a cane. "Remember," he continued, "the one where he and the girl and Ronny Cox are all out on Mars' surface, and their eyes get all big because supposedly they're in a vacuum?"

The camera switched back to the group on the couch. Gwen, Adam and Tess all looked at each other uncomprehendingly, then back to Old Guy. The name "House" could be heard as the camera zoomed back to him, too.

The newcomer ambled a couple of steps closer as he kept talking. "First of all, your eyes wouldn't bulge out like water balloons; they would flash freeze. They'd be like little peach pits stuck in your face. And even if they did swell up, they would break open on the ocular bone, spewing vitreous humor like pus from a popped zit…"

"House, God dammit!" Tess said, the disgust from the mental image she had just been given clear on her face. Gwen swore at the man, too, though not as loudly, and referring to him as "Greg" instead of House. Adam just shook his head and turned around to leave.

The camera moved back to House. It moved right up to him, actually, as Jack was the one doing the moving. He got right in House's face, then put the camera down. The view was of the two men's shoes, and the tip of House's cane, but Jack could be heard clearly as he admonished the other man _sotto voce_ : "Will you stop being a dick…For. One. Minute?"

The camera was back up and traversing back to where Tess was sitting. There was a quick pan back to House, who was scratching his head in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the fact that he had been flipping off the cameraman an instant ago. Then House turned around and began shuffling away, and Jack again focused on Tess, who was now sitting alone on the couch.

Tess glared in the direction of House's egress, then turned back to the camera herself. "As I was saying, Torchwood is…"

* * *

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

After the fifth knock, Arlo Glass opened the door. Jack Bauer strode into the warehouse, practically pushing his way past Glass and Jim Ricker, who had come at the sound of the knocking.

"Where is she?" were Jack's only words.

"She's in the back room," said Glass, gesturing with his thumb.

"Why'd you have to bag her?" Jack asked.

"She made us," said Ricker. "Saw right through our aliases."

Jack gave a disgusted snort, and started walking toward the room Arlo had indicated. Ricker grabbed his arm. Jack stopped and turned towards him.

Ricker stood his ground. "When were you going to tell us she knew how to spot a fake government ID?" Jack said nothing, but Ricker would not let up. "I could see it in how her eyes tracked: she knew what to look for. How does she know what to look for?" he asked. "Who is she, Jack?"

"Why'd you have to bag her?" Jack repeated, this time with noticeably more anger than disgust. Ricker let go of has arm.

"We screwed up, Jack," said Cole Ortiz, who had entered the room during the last exchange. "We had to contain."

"So, essentially," Jack began, "you kidnapped a civilian in a public venue, scaring her and about twenty witnesses half to death –"

"Would you rather we let her run screaming 'bloody murder' down Rodeo Drive?" Ortiz asked, cutting off Jack before he could get really angry. "No, the mission didn't go as planned, but we recovered your package and brought her here to you."

Jack fumed angrily for a moment, then looked in the direction of the back room Arlo had mentioned. Ortiz nodded. Jack gave the three men his best " _I'll deal with you later_ " look, and then stormed toward the back of the warehouse. Ortiz did not move as Jack intentionally bumped him as he passed.

"This is horseshit," said Ricker, as soon as Jack was safely out of earshot. He lit a cigarette and jerked his head toward the back room. "And that ain't no civilian."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Tess was still watching the video when Jack stepped into the room. When she caught sight of him, she froze, not sure of what was going to happen. For his part, Jack felt his visage soften a little, not quite into a smile, but more relaxed than it had been while he was talking to Ortiz and the others.

"Hey," he said to her. He almost did manage to tease out a smile. Then he took another step forward.

As soon as she saw him move, Tess tried to scrabble away in abject fear.

"Hey, hey, woah!" said Jack. "Take it easy!" He stopped and put his hands out in a non-threatening gesture. "If we were going to hurt you, we would have already." This time, he was smiling.

Tess stopped, too, and stared up at Jack. His attempt at assuaging her fears had not totally succeeded, but at least it had gotten her to override her instinctive flight response. Also, there was something she recognized…

"Dr. Fontana," Jack said, dropping his smile and adopting a formal, professional tone, "My name is Jack Bauer. I know you do not remember me, but we used to work together for a group called Torchwood."

Jack let that sentence hang in the air, as a look of shock appeared on Tess' face at his mention of "Torchwood." Her head whipped towards the ipad, then back to Jack. In the complete silence that surrounded the moment. the audio from the tablet could be heard clearly: her video self was discussing some matters of Torchwood protocol with the man holding the camera. When the camera guy spoke, Tess immediately realized that it was the _voice_ that she had first recognized: the same husky yet perfect voice as that of the man who was standing right next to her.

Jack looked to the tablet, then back at her. He smiled again, and nodded.

"I've come to bring you home."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Just as Jack was finishing putting Tess into the truck, his cellphone rang. He shut the back passenger door and walked a few yards away from the vehicle for privacy.

He answered the phone. "Go for Bauer." He listened a bit. "Yes. Tell Gwen that I have her and I'm bringing her in now." He changed the topic. "Does Adam have everything set up?" He listened for a moment, then said, "Good." He started to turn as he listened to the response. He could see Tess sitting in the back seat, staring apprehensively out the window at him. He gave her a reassuring smile. Then he turned away again, as the question he heard made him scowl.

"No, of course not, Lois," he said. "Don't be ridiculous." He sneaked another quick glance back at Tess, but she was not looking in his direction now.

"I'll be handling the interrogation."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	4. Road Trip

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 4: Road Trip

 _Three months earlier…_

"Did they miss the turn?" Tess asked as she peeked out the back of the SUV, then turned back to Jack. In the truck's rear compartment, Adam also turned around from watching out the back window.

"No," said Jack Bauer, as he put his hand to his ear and listened to his radio. "They got stuck behind those RV's we passed. Gwen didn't want them to see her turn off the highway, so she pulled over. They'll be here in five." He looked in driver's side mirror again. Their black SUV was currently pulled over onto the shoulder, engine idling as Jack waited for Gwen and the other Torchwood agents to catch up.

Tess looked out the back window again, then turned back around. Bauer was currently busy checking their surroundings and looking up at the expanse of grey sky above them. So Tess turned back to Adam, who was engrossed in some equations on his laptop.

"Adam," said Tess, after taking a breath and exhaling to steel herself, "The other day, in the lab…" At this, Adam looked up cautiously from his computer. "I was out of line," continued Tess. "There was no justification for the way I snapped at you."

"S'alright," mumbled Adam.

"No, no it's not," said Tess. "And you had every right to call me on it like you did." Tess straightened up, twisting herself so she was now sitting halfway around in the passenger seat. "Look, Adam, sometimes, when I'm working on a problem, I'm moving so fast that I forget that I'm not the only one on the team, that I have to interact with others. I can be…abrupt…with people." Adam looked askance at her, to which she responded with a quick, embarrassed smile before getting back to business. "I own that: it's something I'm trying to work on. My point is," she said, holding up an index finger, "if you ever catch me saying something like that to you again, I _want_ you to call me on it." She looked over to Bauer. "That goes for you, too, Jack."

"Hmm?" said Bauer. He was listening to the chatter on his radio. "Sorry," he said, "I wasn't paying attention."

Tess stopped herself from sighing. "If ever I'm explaining something to you, and you catch me talking down to you, or being short with you…"

"You can't get short with me," said Bauer.

Now it was Tess' turn to be confused. "What?" she asked.

"You're already short," said Bauer. "You can't 'get' short." He held out a hand about two inches above Tess' head, as if to say _You must be_ this _tall to hurt my feelings,_ all the while maintaining a perfectly straight face. Adam had no such luck, as he had to cover his mouth and turn his head to hide his grin.

"Hey!" said Tess, with genuine indignation as Bauer turned back to watching the road. "Hey, you!" she said again, punching Bauer in the arm with her left hand. When she saw that had no effect, she reared back and prepared to do it again, this time with a little more intent, when all three of their radios suddenly erupted:

"Eeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhh!"

Gwen Cooper's verbal ejaculation was followed by a screech of tires, as the SUV she was driving slammed to a halt in the road, its front wheels almost even with the other truck's rear bumper. Jack, Tess, and Adam all looked at each other, then burst out laughing, as they realized what had happened: Gwen had been startled and slammed on the brakes when her truck broke through the perimeter of the holographic camouflage and she saw the illusion of a dark redwood forest turn abruptly into open sky. The expression on Gwen and Lois' faces, which they could see clearly from their vantage point, told the whole tale.

"You okay, Gwen?" Bauer asked over the radio, with the laughter not completely gone from his voice. Gwen gave the "up yours" sign in response, but even she was smiling now. Bauer waved back to her, and then pulled back onto the road, leading the way as Gwen took up position behind them.

"Greg brings up a good point," Lois stated, after House could be heard saying something in the background. "What do they do if the bridge really _is_ out?"

"Then they send someone out to hold your hand, Greg," said Tess, turning and settling back into her seat as the two trucks continued on down the road. She noticed a sign they were passing.

"Welcome to Eureka," she read aloud, then added, "Population: strange."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

The two SUV's pulled into the main town square and parked in adjacent spaces along the center median. The Torchwood team got out and took a look around. House started to make a disparaging comment about all the pretentious hybrid cars he saw, but a dirty look from Gwen silenced him. Bauer saw several ambulances and other emergency vehicles parked here and there around the square, and another driving past. He could see from the insignia and knew from his pre-mission study of the map that at least three different nearby jurisdictions were represented.

A small group was walking toward them. The leader of the delegation was a short, bespectacled man in a blue suit.

"Agent Cooper? Gwen Cooper?" the man said, approaching Gwen, who had taken a position in front of her people. "I'm Douglas Fargo. On behalf of Global Dynamics, I would like to thank you for coming to assist us." He reached out a hand. "Welcome to Eureka."

"Director Fargo," said Gwen, taking his hand. "I'm sorry we're late. The drive took longer than expected."

"Of course," said Fargo. He turned to the people with him. "Allow me to introduce my associates." He pointed to a short, red-haired woman. "This is Holly Marten, our DOD liason." The young woman stepped forward and shook Gwen's hand, and said hello.

"Dr. Marten," said Gwen, "so pleased to finally meet you."

"Thank you for coming," said Holly. "Senator Wen says you come highly recommended."

"Uh, this is Dr. Henry Deacon, our senior researcher and town mayor," continued Fargo. Henry waved, then shook Gwen's hand as Holly began working her way down an impromptu handshake line with the rest of the Torchwood team. "And Jo Lupo, our head of security…Dr. Larry Haberman, my assistant…Dr. Allison Blake, our chief medical officer...and Jack Carter, Eureka's town sheriff." Each of the Eurekans stepped forward or waved in turn.

"Delighted," said Gwen, then she turned to her people. "This is Jack Bauer, my second in command and chief of security," she said, indicating Bauer, who simply nodded. "My assistant and head of personnel, Lois Habiba…my head of medicine, Dr. Greg House…my head of IT, Adam Mitchell…and I believe you already know Dr. Fontana, my head scientist." At the last, she smiled and indicated Tess, who was standing a little back from the rest of the group, while the rest had moved forward and shaken hands with the Global Dynamics people. Tess simply gave an unenthused wave and a curt smile.

"Well," said Fargo, clasping his hands, "I'm sure you'll want to get settled in, and get something to eat, after your drive, but we have briefing scheduled at Global Dynamics for the top of the hour." He looked at his watch, then turned and indicated Larry. "Larry will show you your accommodations at the inn, and Vincent from Café Diem has prepared some takeout for you." At that, Tess' face lit up, and she elbowed both House and Adam, giving them a thumbs-up when they turned to look at her.

As Larry motioned for the Torchwood members to follow him, an ambulance crew came out of Café Diem and got back into their rig. Everyone watched. Tess turned to Holly Marten.

"How many?" she asked, a look of trepidation on her face.

Holly looked to Fargo, who nodded. All of the Torchwood team was listening. But it was Allison who responded.

"Five dead, ten injured," she said, "three of them critically."

Tess turned to Allison. Holly handed a tablet to Gwen, who glanced at the list of names displayed before passing it on to Tess. Tess studied the screen, and said nothing, but the look on her face told the rest of Torchwood Seven all they needed to know.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	5. The Return

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 5: The Return

 _Present day…_

"Welcome back."

Tess squinted at the light as Bauer helped guide her in from the underground parking area. She was not able to raise her hand to shield her eyes, as Bauer had kept the zipties on her. Still, she was able to make out a large room, with a single level but a high ceiling, which seemed to be a common area that branched off into hallways adjoining smaller rooms. And there were people there to greet her.

"Hello, Tess," said a young black woman in a grey suit. Tess recognized her as Lois from the video. Lois had a tablet, but she put that down as she watched Tess, and smiled at her as Jack ushered her past. The fact that Lois' presence did not surprise her that much only served to mark just how surreal her day had become.

Nor did the appearance of Adam, sans rasta hat, give her any pause when he greeted her with a tentative wave. In fact, he seemed more surprised to see her than the other way around, almost as if he was not sure how he was supposed to react to her presence.

"Hello," said Old Guy – _House, was his name?_ Tess thought – as she walked past him. He was wearing a casual shirt instead of the white lab coat he had had in the video, but he was still leaning on his cane. He smiled pleasantly at her.

"Jack!" a woman's angry shout could be heard from across the room. Tess looked up and saw the woman who had called herself Gwen Cooper in the video. She was walking out of one of the hallways, and she looked rather cross.

"Jack, take those off her this instant!" said Gwen, pointing at Tess' restraints. "That's demeaning! She's one of us!" Gwen said, her ire making her Welsh accent very pronounced.

Jack Bauer did nothing at first. Then he shrugged and turned toward his prisoner. Producing a knife from somewhere on his body, he reached over and, before she could react, cut the plastic ties binding Tess' hands. Then he put away the knife before anyone could question where he had been hiding it in the first place. Tess was left just standing there, rubbing her wrists. The remains of the plastic ties fell to the floor. She had a fleeting OCD urge to pick them up.

"Come here, you," said Gwen, her eyes moistening as she moved toward Tess to gather her up and give her a giant bear hug. Tess was surprised initially, but she let Gwen do it and even hugged back. As she did so, her right hand brushed against something metal…

"Alright, nobody move!" shouted Tess, as she pushed Gwen away and brandished the .45 she had taken from the Torchwood leader's holster. She waved the gun around at everyone. House, Adam and Lois all froze and put their hands up – or, in House's case, put one hand up and continued using the other to support himself on his cane. The only exception was Bauer, who just stood there with his arms folded, watching and smirking with a look of I-told-you-so on his face. _And is that a hint of pride, too?_ she thought.

Tess saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She spun and aimed the gun at Gwen, who had stepped forward towards her. "Don't you come any closer!" she said.

Gwen was staying perfectly still. Keeping her hands in the air, she spoke calmly and tried to reason with the woman who was pointing a gun at her head.

"Look, if we wanted to hurt you, we would've -"

"HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE REASSURING?!" Tess demanded. Gwen cocked her head, as she paused to consider the merits of Tess' argument.

Tess stepped back, to clear space between herself and Gwen. "Now here's what's going to happen," she stated. "You… _freaks_ …are going to let me walk out that door" - she pointed to the door she had just come in – "and not stop me, or, so help me, I'll shoot!" She waved the gun again for emphasis.

No one moved. The room was still and dead silent. Everyone was staring at Tess, expectantly.

"Alright," said Bauer suddenly, giving everyone a start. He threw his arms out, then clapped his hands together. "You can go," he said, turning and gesturing with one hand toward the door.

Tess saw Gwen give Bauer a quizzical look. All of the other Torchwood members looked at each other, and lowered their hands a little, but did not move otherwise. She kept the gun pointed at Gwen, but started to pick up her left foot to take a step toward the parking garage.

"Just answer one question first," said Jack as he turned back to face Tess, again startling everyone else.

"What, Columbo?" she practically barked, sarcasm having crept back into her voice. She considered that a good sign.

Bauer ignored the jibe. "How did you get Gwen's gun away from her?"

 _Damn,_ she thought _, Columbo has a point_. Especially since she now realized that her own subconscious had been screaming that very question at her ever since she had felt herself grab the weapon out of Gwen's holster. Even now, she was consciously aware that the gun's safety was off. She did not know how she knew that, but there it was. She fervently hoped that Gwen had carried it that way, because she did not remember disengaging it with her thumb, and that scared her. And it scared her even more that she knew she could disengage a safety with her thumb.

 _Don't let him into your head,_ Tess thought. _You have to get out of here. Concentrate on that._ She took a step toward the garage, keeping an eye, and the gun, on Gwen as she did so. _Don't let him draw you into his mind games._ "I had to take self-defense and combat classes when I was at Area 51," she said. _God dammit!_

"No you didn't," said Bauer, stopping Tess in her tracks. "You _begged out_ of the self-defense classes," he continued, as she just stood, staring open mouthed at him. "You made up some conscientious objector bullshit about not wanting to 'militarize science,' but really, it was because lab time was at a premium there, and you didn't want to give yours up. In fact," he said, pointing a finger at her, "the only classes you took were the ones offered on weekends, and those were all about combat _driving_!"

Off to the side, House leaned over to Lois. "That explains _a lot,_ " he muttered, just loud enough to be heard. Lois just nodded several times, keeping her hands up.

Tess, however, did not hear House's comment, or if she did, she was in no shape to take issue with it, because she was almost completely in shock about what Jack had told her. _How the HELL_ _did he know that?!_ she thought. For what Bauer had said had been an exact recapitulation of the after hours politics which had gone on at Area 51. _Oh, crap!_ _He's in your head! He's in your head!_ Tess tried desperately to refocus on getting out of the room. She took another step, and tried to bluff her way out of the situation.

"My ex-boyfriend was an ex-U.S. marshal," Tess said. "He must've shown me how to do that." _'Must've?'_ she thought. _He's got you talking in the subjunctive, honey. You're so screwed!_

"Ah yes, the sheriff," said Bauer. A strange look passed over his face, but, just as quickly, it disappeared. "I'd buy that," he said, "but marshals aren't allowed to keep their weapons at their back like that. They have to use shoulder holsters." He pointed at Gwen. "For that matter, how did you know Gwen kept her piece at her back?"

Tess just stood there, shocked. She did not have answer to what Jack was asking.

"Come with me," said Jack, and he abruptly walked past Tess to head down one of the hallways, beckoning her to follow. She did not move at first, but then Jack stopped, and gestured again for her to follow him. "C'mon."

She took a look around at all of the Torchwood people, and looked at the door to the parking garage. Then she lowered the gun, and followed Bauer.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Bauer kept walking, apparently unconcerned that Tess was walking behind him with a gun trained on his back. Eventually, he came to a door and stopped. He waited until she had caught up to him, then opened the door wide and stepped through. Tess followed him. As she did, she glanced and saw the words "Science 2" on the door.

Jack continued into the room. Tess looked around. It was a decent-sized room that apparently had been converted into a storage space, based on all of the cardboard boxes she saw piled up. Jack was walking over to one of the piles of boxes. He paused, looked at the label on the top box, then opened it. He reached in and pulled out something. He was not hiding what he was doing from Tess, so she could see the object he had taken out.

It was a red and black…piece of glass, about the size and shape of a football. In truth, the way the glass was rolled around itself, it was hard to categorize the dimensions of it. The thought occurred to Tess that that shape was what you got when a glassblower sneezed. Bauer set the object down on a table which was near the center of the room. She cautiously walked up to the table, wanting to see the object closer, when Bauer waved his hand over the top of it and the room exploded with light.

"Woah!" she said. Purple ribbons of light streamed out from the object and circumnavigated the room. With her mathematician's mind, she could see the complexity of the patterns in the light. "It's…it's…"

"Beautiful, isn't it?" said Bauer, who was now standing right next to her. He looked at her when she turned to him, then looked down at the gun she was carrying, and back at her face.

 _He could have taken the gun from me at any time,_ Tess realized, _and he's letting me know that_. She stood there, appraising Bauer, not sure what to do at that point.

But Bauer's attention was back on the alien object. "It's one of the alien artifacts Gwen and her team recovered from Cardiff and had shipped over here," he said, indicating the artifact in question as Tess turned to regard it again. "The person who translated it said it was like those gold records we put on the Viking spacecraft, with the speech by Jimmy Carter and the recordings of the 'sounds of earth,'" he said, making air quotes. "It's a message, a sampling of their culture sent to us by whoever made it to tell us about themselves."

"That was Voyager, not Viking," Tess corrected him. Then she turned away from the light show to face Bauer. "And that's a silly analogy…Who said that? Who translated the message?"

Jack looked directly at her. "You did."

Tess was flabbergasted. Bauer's two words had struck her harder than any of the myriad combat moves she knew he could have used on her. They struck her because, deep down, she had had a feeling he would say them as soon as she had asked that question.

"Tess, I know you're scared," said Bauer. "I know this is confusing. And I promise you, we are going to sit down and explain everything to you. But first," he said, holding out his hand, "let me give the nice lady her gun back."

Tess looked up into Jack's face. He had a pleasant, non-threatening smile. She took a deep breath, and then, steeling her resolve, she flipped the gun's safety off, ripped the mag and cleared the chamber – thinking _Okay, now this is just getting WEIRD!_ – before turning the gun around and quickly slamming gun and magazine into Jack's hand, as if she expected something bad to happen to her as soon as she did and she just wanted to get it over with and take her consequences.

But nothing bad happened. While Tess stood there, her sytem flushed with fight-or-flight adrenaline, Jack simply pocketed the weapon and again held out his hand.

After a moment, her heart still racing, she reached out and took it. Jack just smiled again, and began to lead her back to the others.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	6. Agents of the Law

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 6: Agents of the Law

 _Three months earlier…_

"It wasn't Beverly Barlowe."

The Eurekans and the Torchwood agents sat on the opposing sides of the trapezoidal briefing table, with Fargo and Dr. Marten seated at the head. Jo Lupo was seated closest to Fargo on his right. Carter was at the far end of the table on his side, with Allison next to him. Henry Deacon and Grace Monroe were seated next to them, staring in rapt attention as Zane Donovan detailed how the Consortium's infiltration of Global Dynamics' headquarters had not been to steal something, but rather to leave something behind.

"They inserted a Trojan horse - that's what Beverly did during the…"

"Yes the body jacking. That must have been _awful_." Gwen Cooper's voice was soothing and her expression genuinely sympathetic as she looked at Allison.

"Excuse me, but how do you know about that?" Grace was the one to ask, after looking to Allison to see how she was reacting to the current topic of conversation. For it had only been a month or so since Beverly Barlowe had used nanobots implanted in Allison's brain to control the Eureka chief of medicine's body and grant herself full access to GD's systems.

"Um, their clearance is almost exactly identical to ours," said Holly Marten, indicating the Torchwood team with her arm. "In fact, their level is maybe a little bit higher. But functionally equivalent," Holly said, with a glance to Fargo for a quick nod of confirmation. A nod was all Fargo could give, as he was in the middle of a cellphone conversation with somebody obviously higher up the government food chain than himself. Gwen Cooper just smiled.

"So, Zane, what you're saying," said Henry, "is that Beverly Barlowe put a computer virus into the _Astreus'_ mainframe, but that virus was _not_ responsible for the ship's destruction?"

"No," said Zane. He went to the display screen, which activated to show lines upon lines of computer code. "Unfortunately, we only discovered all this after the fact, of course," he said, as several of the lines turned red. He pointed to those lines. "The virus was in the navigation system. Specifically, the destination subroutines, and those wouldn't even come online until after the ship launched." Zane shrugged. "My guess? Beverly was trying to steal the ship, not blow it up."

"Thank you, Zane," said Fargo, as he finally got off of his phone call and sat down.

* * *

Zane Donovan walked back to his seat to collect his things. Based on the nature of the information he had just shared, he still had the full attention of everyone in the briefing room.

 _Well, not everyone,_ thought Jack Carter. Eureka's town sheriff was a trained observer. He could tell when someone was paying attention, and when they weren't. Or, at least, when they were feigning polite attention. And that was the word he had been trying to think of for the last few minutes: _polite._ The Torchwood team had been listening _politely_ to Zane and the other briefing presenters for the past few minutes.

Carter had been watching Gwen and her team, while pretending to be fully absorbed in filling out the stack of non-disclosure agreements Larry Haberman had plopped in front of him at the briefing's start. Gwen was seated immediately to Holly and Fargo's left, with her assistant Lois sitting dutifully next to her. Lois had kept her head down, and occasionally taken notes, but Gwen had just sat there with that _polite_ half-smile for almost the entire time. The same with Dr. House. Not like Tess, who had been giving off non-verbal signals of wanting to be anywhere else so strong that Stevie Wonder could have picked up on them. At least _her_ assistant, that Mitchell kid, had been nodding along excitedly to the computer stuff in Zane's lecture.

And Bauer? Carter had seen that Jack Bauer had been watching everyone else in the room, same as he had been doing.

"Uh, Zane?" Fargo's request brought Carter back to the moment. Dr. Donovan stopped halfway out the door. "Stay for this." The way Fargo said it, it seemed as if he had just come to a decision. Zane stopped, surprised that he was being asked to sit on the rest of the highly-classified meeting. He looked over to Jo Lupo, who nodded, then came back to a seat at the table. Carter noticed that Jo seemed a little _off,_ like she was preoccupied with something.

"Hold on a minute!" said Bauer. He looked through a list on a tablet, then pointed at Zane. "We didn't authorize Dr. Donovan for Torchwood-level clearance." Bauer ignored the look that Jo was giving him; instead, he turned to his boss. "I was on board with giving clearance to the sheriff," he told Gwen as he gestured to Carter. "We need local law enforcement with us on this." He looked at Carter and nodded. "But I don't see how he –" he waved an arm at Zane "- helps us. We have enough scientists." Carter just sat there, surprised at having been referred to as a third person substantive.

Fargo jumped to Zane's defense. "Zane is a world-class scientist in his own right, and a classic outside-the-box thinker," he said. "We're going to need all of the talent we can get our hands on to get through this. And right now," Fargo added, leaning forward, "with Dr. Washington in intensive care, Section Five is operating without a director. I was already thinking along these lines, but, as of this moment, I am officially making Dr. Zane Donovan the _acting_ director of Section Five, pending the resolution of this crisis." He gestured to Larry, who immediately went over to Zane's seat and plunked down a stack of nondisclosure agreements similar to Carter's.

Tess' scoff was audible throughout the room. "You can't put _him_ –" she started to say, her outburst earning herself stern looks from both Gwen and Bauer.

Fargo cut her off. "I can," he said, "because I'm head of GD and I say so." Somehow, even though the decision had been made, Fargo's idea of putting his foot down failed to impress anyone. On either side of the room.

"Get through what?" It was Grace who asked. Carter remembered that Grace, as well as Fargo, Holly, and the others, had been abruptly pulled out of training for the _Astreus_ mission just thirty-six hours earlier, after the ship had exploded. The sharpness of her tone was understandable. "What 'crisis?' What 'resolution?' The ship is destroyed! What else do we have to get through?"

Douglas Fargo sighed, then marshalled his resolve before speaking. He pressed the button on the table's smart console that caused the doors to the conference room to lock. The loud click startled everyone, even some of the Torchwood team.

"We all know that the _Astreus_ was destroyed yesterday in an explosion," Fargo began, as the room lights dimmed and a video screen rolled down the far wall. "We have had some of you working on bits and pieces of the investigation; others we have kept in the dark. We have kept everything highly compartmentalized, and for that I am sorry. What I'm about to show you has only been seen by myself, Dr. Marten, Jo, General Mansfield, and Senator Wen. This will explain why we have been so secretive."

The screen came to life, and it was quickly obvious to everyone that what they were watching was the security camera footage from the _Astreus'_ launch bay. Even without the timestamp, the presence of the still-intact ship dated the video to sometime before yesterday morning. Carter had been down there just a few hours earlier; there were still pieces of wreckage and shrapnel all over. But in the video, everything seemed fine. There were a few technicians examining the hull of the _Astreus_. Carter recognized one of them was Dr. Eric Washington, until just recently the head of Section Five.

"That's Paul Broxx," Zane said aloud, as another person walked into frame. Carter immediately got a sinking feeling in his gut. He had recognized Dr. Broxx, the head of Eureka's robotics division, right away, too. It was how he had gotten to know what Dr. Broxx looked like over the past day and a half that gave him the sense of dread: Jo had asked him to begin a discreet investigation on Broxx almost immediately after the explosion while she dealt with the broader security concerns. It did not take a Eureka scientist to figure out that Jo liked Broxx as a possible saboteur. Knowing that, Carter almost couldn't bear to watch the rest of the video: he could pretty much guess what was going to happen.

He turned out to be partly wrong.

"Oh my God!" someone – _Grace? Henry?_ \- shouted, as the scene on the video became bizarre. For Broxx's arm had transformed into a…green, scaly _sword_ which he proceeded to use to impale Dr. Washington. All of this happened in the space of two seconds. Then Broxx withdrew his sword-arm from Washington and used it to attack some other tech who had run up to stop him. The video was silent, but by the time Broxx slashed a third and then a fourth tech, the Global Dynamics briefing room had erupted into screaming. Carter belatedly realized that he was one of the ones doing the screaming.

On the video, people had figured out that running away from Broxx was the wisest course of action. Some were stopping to drag away their wounded coworkers. Broxx was stalking toward the stern of the _Astreus_. His face held no expression; his gait was slow, methodical, and inhuman. He suddenly stopped, and as he turned toward the camera, it was apparent why he had stopped: there was a circular red flashing _light_ in his arm. He pulled a disc-shaped object right out of his skin. The audience in the briefing room was too terrified to be disgusted by the strands of flesh that hung off of it. Broxx simply looked at the object, then stuck it to one of the ship's engines. The red light quickened in its flashing. Then, abruptly, the video went white and ended.

As the lights came back on in the briefing room, no one was able to say anything. Then Gwen's voice was heard:

"They're called Cell 114."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"Meet Lisa Halloran." The picture of a young black woman appeared on the screen as Gwen walked around the briefing table. "Twenty-eight year old Cardiff housewife, nothing out of the ordinary about her." The picture shifted, from what had obviously been one lifted from a driver's license, to one of Ms. Halloran lying on a morgue slab. "Except for the fact that she was able to hack to bits two burglars twice her size, she would have gone unnoticed." The picture shifted again, this time to another morgue shot which showed a wider angle, so that a green sword-arm exactly like Paul Broxx's could be seen attached to her body. "We came across Ms. Halloran a few years ago, and that led us to our first confirmed contact with Cell 114." Gwen clicked her remote and a split screen showed: two scenes of bombed sites, with police officers who were obviously Welsh doing the cleaning up. Then she clicked again, and this time it showed a dead forty-something man with a green sword-arm; he appeared to be lying in front of a military jeep. There were gasps from some of the Eureka people, at least those who had not seen the _Astreus_ video beforehand.

"They're sleeper cells," she continued. "They embed themselves in our society, and wait for an order, and then attack with well-planned acts of sabotage. No one knows much about them, but it's obvious that their goal is to pave the way for an invasion." She stopped for a moment, to let the connotation of the word "invasion" sink in. Fargo had already explained to the room what Torchwood was, that their jurisdiction was anything involving aliens, and how they had been sent on the direct order of Senator Wen to investigate the bombing of the _Astreus_ due to the "unearthly nature" of the bomber. But Gwen's choice of words still had their desired effect: they received several open-mouthed stares. Even Jo Lupo, who had seen the video beforehand, did a double take.

"You mean, invasion like war-of-the-worlds, little-green-men-from-Mars invasion?" asked Sheriff Carter, finally giving voice to what had gone unsaid. For once, no one mocked him.

"Actually, we don't know what they really look like," said Gwen with a smile. "Their agents have been altered to look human. We don't know what form the main attack will take. As far as we know, no world has ever survived their attack."

"How do we know anything about them at all?" Jo asked. "I mean, if they're from…" she pointed up. "How do we know what they're called?"

Gwen looked perturbed at that question. "We got…intel on them, at Cardiff," she finally decided to say. "Anyway, I don't know how the 'Cell 114' name came about," she hurriedly said to change the subject. "We're not sure whether that's just what some other race calls them, or if that's actually what they call themselves and it's an esprit-de-corps thing. What matters is that, since Cardiff, seven other cells across the globe have conducted attacks." She showed a map with red X's on it: in Cardiff, in Glasgow, in Milan, in Ottawa, in Nevada, one in Australia, and two in China. "And now, make that eight," she said, as she used the remote's laser pointer to highlight Eureka.

"Is the attack imminent?" Henry Deacon asked. "I mean, if they mean to conduct sabotage like…like Denmark in 1940, are they doing it now because…well…because the invasion force is here?" Henry threw his hands up. It was hard for him to conceive of the idea of aliens, even though he had been one of the scientists to discover and cure an alien computer virus when the probe ship _Columbus_ had returned to Eureka a few years back. Then he remembered something he had almost forgotten to do.

"At the beginning of the Second World War," Henry said, turning to Carter, "Germany sent spies and saboteurs into Denmark to pave the way for their invasion –"

"I know about World War Two!" Carter said angrily. "It's the science here I don't get, not history!"

Gwen was speaking excitedly. "See, that's where we got lucky!" She walked over to where Henry was sitting, but addressed the whole Global Dynamics side of the table. "When we…exposed the Cardiff cell, we managed to turn Lisa Halloran." She flipped the slides back until the young woman's morgue photo was showing on the screen again. "They communicate with each other, with the other cells, telepathically. Now, we don't know exactly how many more cells there are, waiting to strike," Gwen said, "but it's from analysis of those signals that we do know there are a lot of them. Tess will have all the details for you on that in a moment, but the point is, the other 114s sensed it, and now they think that their communications network may be compromised."

"The point is," said Bauer, "they're doing what any cell-based terrorist organization would do if they thought their communications were compromised: they're cutting themselves off and acting on their own initiative. Each cell is picking its targets and executing attacks on its own timetable."

"Exactly," said Gwen. "They're popping off, one by one, rather than one massive strike all at once. They're still causing ungodly amounts of damage, but we can fight then piecemeal, one at a time. Like here. In Eureka." She pounded a finger into the table for emphasis.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

An hour later, the meeting had adjourned to Global Dynamics' infirmary. Before doing so, Torchwood's doctor, Dr. House, had told the Eurekan delegation about the force field that the 114s generated to protect themselves. He had also told them about the crude screening that Torchwood administered to people to test for whether they were 114, and was currently most of the way through administering said screening to the Eureka bigwigs. One was being particularly difficult.

"Not a Cylon, not a cylon..." Fargo was chanting like a mantra with his eyes squeezed shut. "Ow, frak!" he exclaimed, as the needle found a vein.

"He's human," pronounced House, then added, "Annoying, but human."

Douglas Fargo took the gauze pad offered by Allison, sporting a pad taped to her own forearm from having been tested a few moments earlier. "Did you have to actually stick the needle in? I _hate_ needles!"

"You know," said Allison, "if the point is just to break the skin, you could use one of those old-style diabetes testers to prick a finger."

"Yeah, you could," said House, who was getting his next needle ready as Fargo got out of his seat and went to go stand by Holly Marten. "But it would be harder to see the needle actually snap." He gestured to the chair Fargo had been sitting in. "From this position, you aren't caught by surprise." He gestured to Jack Carter, who was due up next. "And as a point of style," House said, " by taking an actual blood sample, it arouses less suspicion from the people being tested. You can always just dispose of the sample later."

"Question," said Grace. "If I was one of these 114s, wouldn't I _let_ the needle puncture my skin, to fool the test?" Carter, who was sitting down and beginning to roll up one of his sleeves, stopped to nod his concurrence with Grace's logic.

"And that's the other part," said Gwen triumphantly, as she gestured over to where Tess was standing. "As the subject is sitting there, the other test administrator is beaming ultrasonic waves at them to make them put their defenses up." Everyone looked over at Dr. Fontana. She was standing at a table, making adjustments to a semicircular device mounted on a tripod.

"Is that that angry bee thing!?" shouted Carter, jumping out of his seat and pointing at Tess' device.

"Calm down, Carter!" said Tess with exasperation. "I fixed it so it doesn't have the effect it did on the human nervous system. Just the 114s'." She continued tinkering with the machine. "It doesn't make them go homicidal; it just triggers their defense reflex, including the force field, so they can't hide it."

"Tess came up with that idea," Gwen said proudly, "along with one of our former team members." The smile left her face. "That's why we call it the Caftan-Fontana test."

"Uh, maybe you should call it the Fontana-Caftan test?" said Carter, after he had sat back down.

"We're not calling it Fontana-Caftan! It's Caftan-Fontana!" Tess said abruptly.

"It's just…the initials…" said Carter, looking around the room for support. "Ow!" he exclaimed, as House stuck him with the needle. "Easy, Nosferatu!" Carter said, causing House to just roll his eyes.

"Um, there is a potential problem," said Holly. "That looks an awful lot like Dr. Parrish's ultrasonic projector," she said, looking directly at Tess. "He might have an issue with you having incorporated one of his patented designs into your test."

"Oh," said Lois, pulling up a list on her tablet, "are you referring to Dr. Isaac Parrish?" She reached into her portfolio and pulled out some papers. "Because we have a proposal for a government grant to purchase one hundred of his devices for pre-positioning across the country, plus an option for two hundred more for sale to overseas law enforcement agencies."

All of the Eurekans looked at each other. They were suitably impressed by the Torchwood team's level of preparedness, as well as their understanding of the DOD's bureaucratic mindset.

"And if that doesn't work," added Fargo thoughtfully, "tell him I'll raise his clearance level to Priority Two, and that it's the same level of clearance that _I_ have. _That_ ought to mollify ol' Isaac!"

"Ooh, great idea, Dougie!" said Holly, who was all but bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet and clapping.

"What can I say?" said Fargo with false modesty. "I'm the head of GD," he added, forestalling with a hand, and a smile, the objection Jack Bauer was about to make about him being so cavalier in regard to Torchwood-level security clearance.

"Tess," said Henry, changing the subject before an argument could begin, "I have a concern about your plan to use the EM shield to block the 114s' transmissions." Tess' portion of the earlier briefing had been about what Torchwood had learned about the 114s' method of telepathic communication and data sharing, and how Eureka's EM shield could be modulated to jam those communications. Tess' delivery had been very professional; she had even been civil enough to look in Carter and Allison's direction at what seemed the appropriate number of times.

"The shield will work, Henry," Tess said. "It's the only way to uniformly blanket the town with a jamming signal that will prevent them not only from communicating with each other here, but also from contacting the other cells."

"Oh, it'll work, all right," said Henry. "It's just that this frequency will have subharmonics that will play havoc with all our wireless signals. Landline phones will still work, but any cell phones, radios, or wifi networks in town will be effectively knocked out. It's even possible some of the hardware in those devices could be damaged."

"I'm aware of that, Henry," said Tess. "That's why on the drive up here Adam and I worked out specifications for radios we can fabricate so that we" – she indicated everyone in the room with a sweep of her arms – "can keep in contact with each other." She turned to Adam. "Adam, please show our ideas to Henry." The young man complied, swiping the schematics from his tablet to Dr. Deacon's.

As Henry looked over the designs with grunts of approval, Jack Bauer stepped forward. "Then we're definitely going to need a good cover story. We can't afford the 114 getting suspicious of our jamming, and we can't have the general public asking too many questions if we want to avoid a panic."

"Oh, that's easy," said Fargo dismissively. "We'll just say that somebody's experiment went wrong, and the jamming is a side effect."

"Will people buy that?" asked Gwen, after looking to Bauer. "An experiment gone wrong that has adversely affected the entire town with potentially dangerous consequences?"

All of the Eurekans looked at each other, then as one started nodding emphatically, sporadically verbalizing in the affirmative.

"Around here, we call that 'Tuesday,'" said Carter, effectively summing up the opinions of the Eureka residents. Gwen looked to Tess, and even she was shrugging and nodding along with her former coworkers and neighbors.

"Well, then," said Gwen, after cocking an eyebrow and sharing a look with Bauer. "Let's get to it." The group started to disperse. Somebody clicked a remote, and the privacy tinting on the infirmary's windows, which had been dialed up to full to prevent anyone from seeing the group conducting their tests, slowly faded away to transparency.

"Sheriff Carter," said Bauer, catching up with the man, "I'd like to get out and see Eureka. I need to get the lay of the land."

"Yeah," said Carter, "I can help you with that." He turned to Henry. "When you get those radios ready," he said, "let me know and I'll send Andy to pick up ours." At Bauer's inquisitive look, he said "Wait till you meet my deputy…" They walked out of the room together.

"Tess?" Gwen said to catch the scientist's attention. "Director Fargo and I are going to his office to iron out some protocols." She moved in closer to Tess so she could speak more softly. "You and Greg have time now for your…project." With that, she made to leave.

At that moment, Allison's cellphone rang. She picked it up and greeted the person on the other end. But, as she stood listening to what that person was saying, everyone else in the room could see her expression change from one of annoyance at being disturbed, to shock at what she had just heard. She ended the call, and then had to lean back against a cabinet for support.

"Dr. Blake, what is it?" Lois asked.

Allison could barely speak. Finally, she cleared her throat, and fought off what were obviously tears starting to form. "That was Portland General," she said, "the hospital where we airlifted the most severely injured after the acci- the attack." She picked up a pack of gauze, left over from when House had been doing the testing. It wasn't supposed to be out there, on top of a cabinet. However, she didn't put it away, but rather just stuck it absent-mindedly into one of the pockets of her lab coat to deal with later.

She looked up, and it was obvious that she had failed to fight off all of the tears. "Eric Washington just died from his injuries."

Everyone stopped. The Eurekans all looked at each other, as the personal cost of the 114s' attack was yet again driven home.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	7. Oh, Snap!

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 7: Oh, Snap!

 _Present day…_

Tess looked down at the tablet. After the light show in Science 2, she had been led by Bauer to Gwen's office, and was currently sitting across from the Torchwood leader herself.

"Okay," said Gwen. "First of all, let me apologize _categorically_ for what happened to you this morning. It was _not_ my intention to have you manhandled and trundled into a car like a common criminal." Gwen stood up, putting one hand to her forehead as she faced away from Tess. "I would've sent Jack to get you, or come myself, but we were…otherwise engaged. So I let Jack send his _thugs_ , and they _screwed it up_!" She sat back down and looked at Tess. "They were just supposed to make initial contact, and then take you to the rendezvous point we always use - this little Indian place about three klicks to the west; the naan there is _exquisite_ \- where we would meet you and bring you in. I swear!"

"Jack's 'thugs?'" Tess asked. She realized that, the whole time she had been at the Torchwood base, she had not seen Ortiz or any of the others who had abducted her.

"Yes," said Gwen, tapping her hands on the desk to relieve some of the frustration she was feeling. "When Jack came onboard, he brought his list of 'contacts' with him, people who could do odd jobs for us. Jobs that don't require Torchwood-level clearance: surveillance, cleanup, _retrieval_ …" she said, gesturing toward Tess on the last one. "They're not really part of Torchwood, more like contractors. However, they have their uses," Gwen said grudgingly, "so we keep them on retainer."

Tess said nothing; instead, she went back to looking at her tablet. She was currently reading a series of old Torchwood mission reports Jack had downloaded for her so she could catch up on what Torchwood was about. She was surprised and a little frightened to recognize her own writing style in some of the reports.

"How long have I been a 'retired asset?'" she asked.

"Three months." The speaker was Jack Bauer, who walked in the door with the glass of orange juice Gwen had offered Tess twenty minutes earlier. "Sorry," he said, as he handed the now warm glass of juice to Tess, "I got caught up…helping Adam." He looked to Gwen, and she exchanged a meaningful nod with him. Then he turned back to Tess. "You left not long after Adam and I came on board."

"Three months," repeated Tess.

Gwen nodded. "Let me start at the beginning," she said. "Does the name Bruce Stanley ring any bells?"

"No," replied Tess, "should it?" She shook her head. "I mean, you're not going to tell me I'm married to him or anything, are you?" she asked, using the flippant remark to try to regain some sense of control over the day's events.

Both Gwen and Jack remained completely silent and kept their faces expressionless.

"Oh, God!" said Tess, after looking from one Torchwood agent to the other. She quickly glanced down to look at her fingers, half expecting to see the telltale marks from a wedding ring. In her mind's eye, she saw a man sitting alone at her dining room table, covered with three months' worth of dust and cobwebs.

Gwen burst out laughing. "Sorry, sorry!" she said in between breaths. "I couldn't resist having you for a laugh there! And YOU went along with it!" she said, pointing at Bauer after he rolled his eyes.

"Dr. Stanley is openly gay," Jack offered in partial explanation, his use of the word "openly" earning him a mock-dismayed look from Gwen.

"With my track record, that's not an answer," mumbled Tess.

Gwen took on a matter-of-fact tone and demeanor. "Dr. Bruce Stanley is head of the Australian Torchwood – my opposite number in Sydney, if you will," she told Tess. "You met him when he was undercover at your radio telescope facility." Tess looked up sharply at that. "Some alien entity possessed one of your scientists, tried to 'phone home'…" Gwen waved away the details. "Anyway, whatever happened on that mission, you so impressed Bruce that, when he heard I was trying to set up an American Torchwood, he made sure the jacket he'd put together on you made it across my desk." Gwen sat back. "You were one of my first hires." She leaned forward again. "We did your interview over that virtual reality hologram thingy you had," Gwen added excitedly, "do you remember that?"

Tess shook her head. "No," she said with all honesty. "When did I start working here?"

"About a little over eight and a half months ago," Gwen answered.

"Eight and a half months?! That's not possible!" Tess exclaimed. "I've only been back in the States since…" she stopped. She had been working backward in her mind, trying to work out the timeline Gwen had given her, but she suddenly realized that it meshed _really well_ with the events of her life over the past year.

"Can you remember why you left Australia?" It was Bauer again. He knew that Tess was beginning to see the truth, but he wanted to hammer the point home.

"I got homesick," Tess replied, and she suddenly realized how rotely she had said those three words, like reciting a times table, or the rest mass values of subatomic particles. "No, wait," she said, "I didn't." She looked to Bauer, and then Gwen, as she tried to pull out a memory. "I left the radio telescope array – I wasn't homesick! I _loved_ that job!" Tess put her head in her hands. She remembered putting in her notice at the job in Australia. "I burnt a bridge!" she lamented. "It took me over a year to get that job! That was the job I dreamed about having since I was sixteen years old, and I just up and left."

But what had she left _for_? Now that she thought about it, the sum total of her professional accomplishments since leaving Australia nine months ago were notes for a book she was working on and a rejection letter from the Hayden Planetarium. _And that interview was only two months ago_ , she thought. _What was I doing for the rest of the time?_ It also puzzled her why, if she had been homesick, she would have moved to Los Angeles? _I don't know anyone here,_ she thought. _If anything, I should have been looking for a job back east, to be closer to my parents…like I am now,_ she realized.

"Running a radio telescope array?" Gwen was asking with a smirk. " _That's_ what you fantasized about when you were sixteen?"

Any rebuttal was cut off by Gwen's cellphone chirping. Gwen answered it, then became immediately serious as she talked to whoever was on the line. "Okay, I'll be right down," she said. She hung up, and then pointed to Tess.

"Jack, I have to go check something with Greg. Why don't you show Tess her old office?" the Torchwood leader said as she left the room.

"I have an office?" Tess asked, getting up as Jack motioned her out into the hallway.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"Woah!" said Tess, as Bauer led her through the door to Science Lab 1. "This is some office!" She could see about a half dozen work tables spaced out around the expansive room. There was an alcove in the wall ninety degrees to her right, which upon closer inspection Tess realized was the opening to another mini-room. That space was being used for storage, as it was filled with a couple of metal shelving units identical to the ones she had seen in the other Science room. There were also a couple of cubbyhole work areas: one next to the alcove, and one in the opposite corner. She recognized the person at that one.

"Don't mind me," said Adam. He was working on soldering two pieces of circuit board together. "Just needed to get this done for Gwen." He went back to work.

Bauer led Tess through the room to the other cubbyhole. A cardboard box, blanketed by a thin layer of dust, sat on top of the worktable.

"Oh," said Adam, looking up again, "I got that out for you, Tess." He pointed to the box. "Although, I think we never actually put it away after you left, just boxed everything up and left it here." He looked at Jack.

Tess went over and opened up the flaps of the box, afterward wiping her hands on the table top to get the dust off. She reached in and pulled something out.

"Oh, wow, my book!" she exclaimed. It was a copy of the book on astrophysics she had published about a year before taking the job with Global Dynamics. In truth, she knew, it wasn't so much a book as one of her dissertations, padded out to book length. Unfortunately, it had sold about as well as a dissertation padded out to book length, which was why she had waited so long to start thinking about writing a sequel. She opened the book up, and immediately lost the place of whoever had been using the dust jacket as a bookmark. It hadn't been more than about fifty pages in, she noted with dismay.

"You told me they found that in a bookstore for you as a joke, gave it to you as a surprise to cheer you up one day," Adam explained. "That's why you keep it around."

Tess looked at the inside cover. She had autographed it: _To my friend Roy_ was the dedication. She put the manuscript down and went back to peering into the box. There was a large, folded up piece of paper, with the residue of double-sided tape still on the corners.

When Tess pulled it out and unfolded it, it turned out to be a man-sized target from a shooting range, complete with bullet holes. Most of the bullets had hit within the scored rings, or at least within the black silhouette, with only a few outliers. It was the name on the shooter's line that drew her attention: _T. Fontana_. She did a double take and looked at the scoring section again. She had apparently gotten an eighty percent, as certified by the instructor, one _K. Ryan._ She had no idea who _K. Ryan_ was, but the handwriting was the same as whoever had written _"I'm so proud of you!"_ and _"Ephesians 3:20 : )!"_ along the bottom. It was also a different handwriting than whoever had written "BROADSIDE" and "BARN" with arrows pointing to two holes completely outside the silhouette.

She reached in and began to pull out other items: a paperweight, a box of push pins, a laminated periodic table, some old pictures of family and friends, even a couple of funny novelty pencils that she thought she had left in Australia. She found a piece of yellow legal paper stuck against the inside of the box. Fishing it out and looking at it, Tess saw her own handwriting. She read aloud:

" _GWEN'S RULES:_

 _#1. Don't open the rift._

 _#2. Do not take any alien artifacts out of the building without express permission._

 _#3. Don't open the rift._

 _#4. No personal deliveries to the Hub. This includes takeout. No exceptions._

 _#5. Don't open the rift._

 _#6. There is no Rule Number 6._

 _#7. Don't open the rift."_

She put the paper down. "What's the rift?" she asked.

Jack and Adam looked at each other for a moment, and then Jack pointed to an open door next to Adam's workspace. "That's our rift monitor."

Tess had noticed the small room a few moments earlier. It looked about the size of a small bathroom – in fact, that's what she had originally taken it for, until she had noticed the strange equipment inside. Now, upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a monitoring station of some sort, as there were several screens mounted on a metal frame and a couple of moveable keyboards. She walked over to it. As she did, she noticed a lever marked with red and white warning stickers.

"Don't touch that!" said Jack as she neared the device. As she stopped, he pointed to the lever. "When fully armed, that lever can force open the rift. If you do that, you can break the space-time continuum and destroy the city, the world, the whole solar system…everybody dies."

Tess didn't react at first, but once her brain caught up with what Bauer had said, she involuntarily jumped backwards. "Why do we even have that?!" she asked.

Bauer gave her a genuine smile. "That's what I said!" He took her arm and led her away from the rift monitor. "Gwen says they rebuilt it from plans of the one they had in Cardiff. You and Roy Caftan were working on a theory that you could attenuate the worst of the rift openings by doing small, controlled openings…like setting a backfire," he said.

Tess looked up at that. She recognized the name from some of the reports she had read, and from her autograph. "Will I get to meet this Dr. Caftan?" she asked.

Bauer looked straight at her. "No," he said. "He's dead."

Tess was brought up short. She did not know how to respond.

Fortunately, Bauer's phone chirped at that moment. He looked at it. "Gwen needs me," he said. He looked around, then walked over to a large piece of equipment covered in a tarp. "Here," he said, pulling the tarp off, "why don't you work on this while I'm gone? Adam, show her."

Tess looked at what Bauer had uncovered. "That's…is that what I think it is?" she asked.

"Yes," said Adam. "It's the prototype of the sampling laser you designed for your robotic Titan probe. We brought it back from Global Dynamics." He walked over to the others. "You had a theory that a directed energy pulse, in this case a laser beam, of sufficient magnitude would be enough to penetrate the shielding of a 114."

"The 114, right," said Tess. She remembered reading about the 114 attacks in Las Vegas and Ottawa in some of the briefings Bauer had shared with her.

"Adam's been working on trying to make a man-portable version of _Star Wars_ here," said Bauer, as he indicated the prototype. "You could help." He turned to head toward the door. "We need a better way of stopping them than running them over with a tank," Bauer said as he walked out.

Tess just stood for a moment. Finally, Adam had to wave a hand in front of her face to get her attention.

"Sorry," she said, "this is just so overwhelming."

"S'alright," Adam said cheerfully, "I understand. I know a bit about having a lot to take in at once, myself." He walked over and started tinkering with the laser. "I haven't worked on this in a while," he said. "You don't suppose your memory's coming back, do you?"

"Enough to remember that I didn't design the laser," Tess replied. "Another team did that; I just integrated their work into Tiny's chassis." When Adam looked up, she explained, "Tiny was what I called the probe."

"Oh," said Adam, laughing at the joke. "Well, I've since come to the conclusion that 'man-portable' is not feasible in the short-term, given the power requirements," he said, gesturing at the prototype. "Instead, I'm going for something we can mount in the back of one of our trucks – you know, like those Vulcan guns your Secret Service has," he said while pretending to fire a machine gun. "But again, the power is just too much for even this size. I was hoping to ask you how you dealt with the heat exchange. The circuits always fuse and I'm back to square one."

"You mean from the waste heat?" Tess asked. Already, working on a scientific problem was helping her feel like she was getting back some sense of normalcy. "I seem to remember that was an issue. What's the power curve look like when you test fire?"

"Actually, I've only been able to fire it once," Adam said. He walked across the room and lifted up a wall calendar, revealing a couple of scorch marks and a suspiciously round drywall patch. "It's probably for the best that I can't get it to work anymore," he said sheepishly, "as Gwen threatened to invoice me if I burned down the building."

"Aw," said Tess, as it was now her turn to laugh. Yes, she was definitely feeling more comfortable than she had been all day. "We'll figure it out, Adam." She saw a blank notebook on one of the tables, so she walked over to get that. On the way, she took a longer route to get a good look at some of the material in the storage alcove, in case there was something just lying around that might be useful.

"I mean, it was a space probe, right?" asked Adam, as Tess was busy grabbing a pen. "You didn't really need to worry about heat exchange, because it was in absolute zero and could just radiate."

"True, but you're forgetting it was meant to function on Titan," Tess said as she walked back to the laser, "where the ground is covered in liquid methane. You don't want your sampling laser to risk melting the footing underneath your 20-ton lander every time it's engaged…" She got lost in thought for a moment, then suddenly remembered how she had solved that particular problem before. "Aha!" she said, snapping her fingers. She turned to Adam and looked at him. And looked.

To her credit, she didn't scream.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	8. Seen Through Fresh Eyes

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 8: Seen Through Fresh Eyes

 _Three months earlier…_

"Wow, look at that!" Tess was saying on the video. "Greg, can you get a shot of this, please?" she asked, pointing her penlight again into the opening in Adam Mitchell's skull. The camera angle moved jerkily as the front of the opening came into view. "This device is cleanly joined with his cerebrum," Tess said, as she pointed to the Info-Spike implanted onto Adam's brain. "There appears to be no tissue damage whatsoever…"

* * *

Allison, Henry, Grace, Zane, and a couple of the more senior members of Allison's staff stared open-mouthed at the video Tess was showing them. They were in a side area, isolated from the rest of the Infirmary by privacy screens. Once again, the Infirmary windows were tinted opaque, but only on their side of the room this time.

"We wanted to show you this first," said Tess, as she switched off the monitor, "because telling you about it just doesn't do it justice." She and House had told the Eurekans what she had been told by Adam about the Info-Spike implant in his head, leaving deliberately vague the part about how Adam had acquired it while time-travelling with a mysterious alien known as "the Doctor." She lowered her voice. "As you can imagine, Mr. Mitchell is very self-conscious about his…" she faltered as she pointed to her forehead.

"His brain robot?" Zane finished for her. However, there wasn't as much bite to his tone as there usually was, proving that there were things that could awe even the great Zane Donovan.

Tess and a couple of the others glared at him nonetheless. "What I mean is," Tess continued, "we wanted you to see the video first, so you could prepare yourselves. We're going to bring Adam in now, and I'd really appreciate it as a personal favor to me if you could try to make him feel as least uncomfortable as possible." She nodded to one of Allison's doctors, a man named McReady. Dr. McReady walked out past the privacy screens and got the attention of Adam, who was waiting in the other part of the infirmary. "If anyone so much as smirks – "Tess said, looking directly at Zane " – I _will_ draw my sidearm."

Zane gulped in spite of himself. Grace looked over to Allison and mouthed, _Sidearm?!_

"I'm a doctor," said House, before the situation could escalate. "I'm trying to help my patient –" he gestured to Adam who was walking in "– and I can't figure out how to get that thing out of his head. Tess says you guys are the best. That's why we came to you for a second opinion."

"Adam," Tess said as the young man walked over and sat down at a table in front of the group, "it's alright. Why don't you go ahead and show everybody, okay?"

Adam paused for a moment, looking to House, who gave him an encouraging nod. Then he sighed, and snapped his fingers. Four flaps of skin on his forehead peeled back to reveal a hole in Adam's head. Inside could be seen a metal device affixed directly to Adam's brain. There were gasps from all of the Eureka scientists and doctors. Nobody smirked.

"My God!" said Grace, once she had recovered. "It's incredible!"

Henry moved in to take a closer look. "And this is _our_ technology? Not alien?" he asked, though he seemed to have difficulty comprehending either potential answer.

Adam nodded in response, but it was Tess who answered. "From well into the future," she confirmed. "We can't tell you anything more, but it's far more advanced than anything on earth. Right now."

"Henry, be careful!" Allison said, as she began to don a surgical mask.

"You won't need that," said House, waving her off. "You would think that the opening would go immediately septic, what with everyone poking and prodding about inside it, but that thing puts out some kind of sterilization field. Even the skin bacteria that's supposed to be there isn't." He pointed at Adam's head. "You could eat off of this man's forehead."

"And… _thank you_ , Greg," Tess said, after sharing an awkward look with the rest of the room. "But that's why, if you'll look at our notes, we've decided to focus on removal of the Info-Spike, rather than just disabling the opening mechanism and leaving it in place. We're not sure the device won't break down, or its power source won't start leaking or some such, potentially putting Adam's life in danger."

"Well, wouldn't you think that the designers of this…Info-Spike would have thought of that?" asked Henry, pulling away from Adam so that Grace could get a closer look at Adam's implant. "I mean, even for us, the FDA wouldn't let you implant a pacemaker without first…Ah-hah!" Henry shouted, snapping his fingers as he came up with an idea.

"Aagh!" Grace exclaimed, as the flaps in Adam's forehead closed and nearly pulled the lighted probe she was using out of her hands.

"Hey!" said Adam simultaneously, shoeing her away to keep said probe from getting caught _inside_ his skull. "Will you not do that!" he shouted at Henry. "That's the trigger: snapping!" He snapped his fingers, and the flaps opened again.

Henry realized what had happened, looking at his hand. "I'm sorry!" he said quickly.

"Why would you make your passcode something people do every day?" Grace asked, having recovered from the sudden shock. "Why not make it saying 'antidisestablishmentarianism' or something like that?"

"Lady, I have a hole in my head!" said Adam, pointing at the opening. "What part of that screams 'sound judgement' to you?"

"Adam," said Tess, disappointment coming through clearly in her tone of voice.

Adam sulked a bit, then muttered a quiet apology to Grace. "I wanted to be able to access the Info Stream quickly," he said. "'Faster!' It's the hacker's mantra," he added.

"Oh my God!" said Zane, causing everyone to look his way. "Adam Mitchell. You're Adam Mitchell!"

"Yes, Zane," said Allison, "that's his name. What does-"

"No," said Zane, stepping away from his station, where he had been monitoring Adam's life signs, "you don't understand. He's _the_ Adam Mitchell!" He turned to Adam. "Dude! It is an _honor!_ " he said with a big smile on his face, rushing over to shake Adam's hand.

"Zane, what are you talking about?" asked Grace.

"Don't you people know who this man is?" Zane asked. "Adam Mitchell is the Michael Jordan of hacking!' He turned to the others. "When he was eight, he hacked into the Department of Defense mainframe…"

"Big deal," said Dr. McReady. "Isn't that how you got started on your life of crime, Donovan?"

"Yeah, when I was _eleven!_ " said Zane, as if that made all the difference. He turned back to Adam. "When he was eight," Zane began, almost reverentially, "Adam Mitchell hacked into the Army's command structure and started issuing bogus orders to one of our bases in South Korea. He got the base to mobilize an entire mechanized brigade. He only got caught when he tried to task one of our spy satellites to take a picture of the rude word that the formation of tanks and APC's spelled out from above."

"Bum," said Adam. "I got them to line up to make the word 'bum.'" Grace looked at him. "I was eight," he said, shrugging.

"Dude, people are _still_ using parts of your algorithm on the 'Net!" Zane said to Adam.

"Wonderful," said McReady. "Donovan has a role model now."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"Are there only ever four?" asked Fargo.

The Global Dynamics director was sitting at his desk, perusing the files Gwen Cooper had brought to show him. Dr. Marten was standing over his shoulder, reading along with him. Gwen was seated in the guest's chair across from them, nonchalantly playing with a model car she had taken from the desktop. Larry Haberman and Lois sat on the couches to one side of the room, ready to take notes for their respective bosses.

"Not sure whether that's due to a lack of manpower, or arrogance on the 114's part," said Gwen after nodding. "Probably a little of both. In any case, the cells always consist of four operatives."

"So we can expect three more attacks," said Jo Lupo, the final occupant of the room, as she stood off to the side reading the Torchwood files on her tablet.

"Yes," said Gwen, putting the model down. "They usually all go pretty quickly." She made four quick, chopping gestures with her hand to punctuate her statement. "In every case, the cell picks four targets: three hard targets, all taken out with suicide bombers, plus one soft target – an assassination, or a more subtle act of sabotage like poisoning an aquifer."

"Like in Glasgow," said Larry.

"Exactly," said Gwen, pointing at him in acknowledgement. "Based on past attacks and our analysis of their communications, we believe that each cell's leader assigns the bombing targets to the other cell members and takes the soft target for itself. That way, it can survive to step in and carry out a bombing in case one of the others is intercepted."

"They've planned for a twenty-five percent casualty rate," concluded Jo. "Reasonable, though a bit pessimistic, considering they have impenetrable force fields."

Gwen nodded again. "It's a numbers game to them," she said.

"Wait," said Holly, pulling up something on her screen. "In the attack in western China, there were _five_ targets: four bombings and an assassination of a senior Party official. Doesn't that differ from the profile? And there was only one in Ottawa, which they all converged on."

"In Lanzhou," interjected Lois, "we're confident that there were only three _planned_ bombings: the railway station, the power plant, and the army barracks. Signals intelligence from your NSA clearly indicates that there was a gap of almost sixteen minutes from when the Party official was stabbed to when Party Headquarters was blown up. It's likely that the final bombing only happened because the police arrived and had the 114 trapped."

"And you can't count Ottawa," added Gwen, "because that was Torchwood Five. Once they learned of its existence, they probably saw it as the high-value target it was and scrapped their previous plans."

"Okay, so what do we do?" asked Fargo.

"We continue the testing," said Gwen. "We have at most a couple of days before the rest of the attacks come to pass. If we can find the other 114's before they activate, we can stop the attacks and save lives."

"Alright," said Fargo, clearly not happy with the situation that had been handed to him. "I'll tell Dr. Blake to prepare for mass testing. Larry," he called, as Dr. Haberman stood up, "I'm putting you in charge of organizing this. Take the priority lists that Torchwood has provided and set up a schedule. Use HR's resources if you need to, but remember: no one in that department has Priority Two clearance."

"And when Director Young complains?" asked Larry, referring to Global Dynamics' head of Human Resources.

Fargo stood up. "Then use your authority, and tell her it comes straight from me." He walked around to the front of the desk. "Besides," he said, "if you have to, tell her she's got nothing to worry about: she's Priority Four."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

After about twenty more minutes of poking and prodding, it was decided by the Eurekans that more study was needed to figure out a solution to Adam's problem. Also, Henry had gotten a page from his lab, so he was forced to leave. Everyone promised to read over Tess and House's notes, and they were currently working on returning the Infirmary back to normal. Even Adam himself had left: Zane had cajoled him into coming down to Section Five to see the advances Eureka had made in organic computing over the past few years.

Allison had received the directive from Fargo to start preparing for more testing, but she had passed that responsibility off to Dr. McReady, who was interfacing with House. Instead, she stood off to one side, talking to Grace, and looking over at Tess, who was gathering up her equipment. After about a minute, Allison walked over to Tess, with Grace taking up a classic wingman's formation on her starboard six.

"Tess," Allison began, "we need to talk."

Tess was busy packing up one of the medical scanners she had been using on Adam earlier. "Dr. Blake, I am on a mission here, and I would appreciate it…" she said abruptly, not even looking in Allison's direction.

Allison grabbed her arm, getting Tess to look her way. "Don't you 'Dr. Blake' me!" said Allison. She positioned herself right in front of Tess. "We need to talk," she repeated with conviction, "about Jack, and you know it. You have to know that neither he nor I planned for things to happen the way they did. They just…happened. We would never want to –"

The change in Tess was immediate, as she barely waited for Allison to finish speaking. "Alright," she said, her voice significantly louder than it needed to be, "you want to do this now?" She stopped and practically threw down the scientific instrument she was holding, then rounded on Allison. "You say you and Jack just 'happened?' Well, then how come I heard about it from _Vincent?_ "

Allison said nothing. Grace was silent, too: it was as much of an indictment of her friendship with Tess as it was of Allison's. After Allison and Carter had gotten together, neither Allison nor Grace had particularly wanted to break the bad news to their formerly best friend, and had unfortunately procrastinated the task long enough to allow Tess to learn about the new development on her own.

"How come I heard about it from Vincent?" Tess repeated, "hemming and hawing and not realizing I could see his body language through the hologram: 'Um, uh, Tess, dear, there's something you should know…'" she said, doing a pretty good imitation of Café Diem's proprietor.

People started leaving the infirmary. Those who could not leave, because they worked there, tried to surreptitiously move as far away from the developing conversation as they could.

But Tess was not finished with old business, not by a long shot. "I _cleared_ that date with you, Allison. I asked you, point blank, was I stepping on your toes? Your exact words: 'go for it!'" She started to take a step away, then came back, jabbing a finger right in Allison's personal space. "There's shit I did in _Section Five_ where I had less explicit permission from you than that date with Carter! And you never said _word one_ about having feelings for him, but boy, we break up and within a month you two are in each others' arms!"

Tess's decibel level had reached the point where even those trying to politely ignore the argument stopped and turned to stare at the three women. The spectators' silence coincided with the lull in the shouting, catching even Tess' attention. She had another salvo of accusations primed and ready to launch at Allison, but she was so angry that she just grabbed her equipment, threw it into her bag, and stormed out of the infirmary.

"That went well," said Grace, as Allison looked on with a pained expression.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

As Tess was busy gruffly stalking through GD's halls, the memories of what had happened between her and Allison and Carter fully reawakened by the fight, there was by chance another awakening taking place at the outskirts of town…

When the 114's persona took over, the change was like a light switched being flipped: the human persona _turned off_ , and the 114 abruptly took over _._ The 114 simply dropped the soil samples its human façade had spent the better part of the afternoon collecting, and turned to look for a vehicle. The 114 took a moment to think that, while it was good that this particular cover identity involved working far away from others, thus avoiding too much close scrutiny, it was certainly inconvenient to have to worry about transportation to reach its target.

For it was _time_. The mission needed to be completed.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	9. Different Perspectives

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 9: Different Perspectives

 _Back in the present…_

"What happened?"

When Gwen walked in to Science 1, Tess was sitting on the edge of a table holding a cold compress to her head as House was examining her. The Torchwood chief of medicine and Jack Bauer were the only other people in the room with Tess, Adam having left after bringing Jack and House to Tess' aid.

"Seems Tess rediscovered Adam's secret," Bauer said with a smirk, pointing to his forehead.

Tess took the compress off to look Gwen in the eye. "I snapped my fingers and his head just BOOM!" she said, holding her free hand up to her forehead and pantomiming with her fingers and thumb the way the flaps of skin had opened up to reveal Adam's Info-Spike. To her credit, when it happened, she hadn't screamed. Instead, she had tried to get away from Adam as quickly as possible, grabbing whatever small objects she could find and throwing them at the young scientist. She had lost her footing when she slipped on some paper and pencils; she had been trying to scrabble and crawl toward the door when she'd tried to stand up and solidly rapped the back of her head on the underside of one of the lab tables, the pain completely stopping her attempted flight and reducing her to the undignified duck-and-cover position she had still been in when Jack and House arrived.

"Ah," said Gwen knowingly, with a wink at Bauer, "I see." She turned to Tess. "We don't snap our fingers here at Torchwood, young lady," she said, smiling.

"Got it," said Tess, who had gone back to putting the compress on the back of her head.

"It can be…disconcerting," admitted House, "until you've seen him do it a couple of times and gotten used to it." Gwen and Bauer both looked at him. "What?" he said. "We've all thought it! I'm just saying," he added, as Bauer was slowly beginning to nod along even as Gwen continued to stare daggers at him. House went back to diagnosing Tess. "Well, I don't think you have a concussion, but you'll have a hell of a bump. Brushing your hair is not going to be fun for the next couple of days," he told her. "But overall, I think you're going to be okay."

"You owe Adam a new desk caddy, however," Bauer deadpanned, looking around at some of the debris on the floor.

"Good thing she didn't get her hands on a stapler," said House. "She could have done some real damage with that."

"Maybe that's what we should do when the 114 attack," said Bauer. He jerked his thumb at the laser prototype. "Instead of building a laser, we'll airdrop Tess into an OfficeMax." The twinkle in Bauer's eye showed he was clearly having no trouble seeing the humor of the situation.

"Okay, okay," said Gwen, putting a stop to the good-natured ribbing. "Don't you gentlemen have work to do?"

House made to leave first. "Seriously," he said to Tess, "if you notice any more blurry vision, or your headache gets worse instead of better, come get me." He began shuffling out the door, but then stopped and moved aside as Adam came back in.

Tess saw him, and immediately tried to apologize. "Hey, Adam," she began, "Man, I am so sorry –"

He shook off her apology. "Are _you_ alright?" he asked.

Tess nodded back to him. "Yes," she said.

"Good," he said graciously. "That wasn't even the worst reaction I've gotten to my implant." He went back to his workstation. "Though, surely you can appreciate the karmic irony in trying to crack your own head open upon seeing the hole in mine," he said, pointing to the table she had hit her head on.

Tess smiled weakly at him. He smiled back, but it was obvious to her that some of the warmth was missing from his eyes; there was a distance now in the way Adam interacted with her that hadn't been there before. That, and what she'd learned from Bauer about Adam's Info-Spike, made her want to kick herself for the way she'd reacted to him. _That must be hell for him, to have to try and live with that_ , she thought.

For his part, Adam was already back at work on the circuit board he'd been working on earlier. "I went to relieve Lois," he told Gwen by way of explanation, "and I forgot that, in all of the excitement, I hadn't finished this piece." He went back to the soldering, ignoring the way Tess put her head down in reaction to what he'd said.

"Oh, Greg," said Gwen, "I needed to check something with you." She walked out into the hall with House.

Bauer walked over to Tess. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you going to be alright?" he asked softly.

Tess put down the ice pack. "Yeah, I think so," she said. She looked around, then lowered her voice, too. "Jack," she asked, "can I ask you something?"

"Of course," said Bauer. "Anything."

"Why did I leave?" Tess asked. "It wasn't because –" she looked over at Adam "—I couldn't handle stuff like that, was it?" she asked, pointing to her own forehead.

"No," said Bauer, almost chuckling. "In fact, if I recall correctly, the first words out of your mouth when you saw Adam's head trick were something to the effect of, 'That's so cool!' Curiosity was never your weak point."

Tess looked up at Jack. "Then why would I want to leave a place like this?"

Bauer drew a breath, then let it out. "You didn't agree in totality with our mission objectives," he said. "You felt that there was too much emphasis on defense versus scientific exploration." He moved around so he was looking Tess straight in the eyes. "You didn't like that we sometimes have to kill the hostile aliens to protect the planet," he said softly.

Tess thought for a moment. She began to say something in response, but then stopped as her eyes alit on something she recognized. "Are those storycatchers?" she asked in her normal voice, as she gingerly got down from the table and walked over to one of the storage shelves. She pulled out a metal case, placed it on a higher shelf, and opened it to reveal a dozen small glass globes. "They are!" she said, turning to Bauer. "Is this what you used to erase my memory? Because I know how to fix it if it is!"

"Oh, those things," said Gwen as she came back into the room. "Jack," she said to Bauer, "why don't you go and take over for Lois?"

Bauer nodded to her and, with a last look at Tess, headed out. Gwen walked over to Tess.

"Retcon's a chemical that you drink," said Gwen. "You brought those with you when you joined us," she said, indicating the storycatchers. "You and Roy were trying to use them to effect memory loss at a distance."

"That's not what the storycatchers are designed for," said Tess. "Well, yes, there was the one time at Eureka that that happened, but that was an accident. A one-in-a-thousand, perfect storm of mechanical failure and human error."

"Yes, and try though you did, you two couldn't recreate it," Gwen said. "Greg volunteered to let you test it on him; you couldn't even make him forget the password to his email."

"And he does that all the time on his own," Adam chimed in, as he had stopped and come across the room to grab a better soldering iron.

Tess was shocked. "That's not what these are for!" she protested.

Gwen just continued looking at her. After a few moments, the Torchwood leader dropped the inscrutable expression on her face and said, "Walk with me. I'd like to show you something." She made to walk out of the lab.

Tess stood for a moment, not believing what Gwen had told her. She looked down at the storycatchers, then closed the case when she saw that Gwen was almost out the door. She hurried to catch up.

"That's not what they're for," she said to herself.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	10. Ride Along

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 10: Ride Along

 _Three months earlier…_

"What I don't get," said Jack Carter, looking both ways before making the left turn, "is why they're called 'Priority Two' if we're going to be testing those people first."

"That's what I said!" exclaimed Bauer, a surprised smile on his face as he sat in the jeep's passenger seat. The Torchwood operative had been out driving around town with Eureka's sheriff for the past hour and a half since leaving the Infirmary. The afternoon had passed uneventfully for the two men, giving Jack Bauer the chance to get familiar with the layout of the town and its surrounding area.

"Shouldn't we call them 'Priority One,' then?" Carter asked again.

"Because it's a misnomer," said Bauer, resting his arm on the window gasket. "Look," he began, "I've only been with these guys for a couple of weeks, but the way it was explained to me, the profile works." He was referring to the profile Torchwood Seven had come up with for uncovering Cell 114 members. "People without children, no siblings or other connections to their own childhood, extensive gaps in their personal history…" he recited, "All the things you would expect from someone who's really an alien infiltrator in disguise."

"Like Paul Broxx," interjected Carter, nodding along. "Everyone I talked to said Broxx was always telling them he was the youngest of four children, bragging about a half dozen nieces and nephews…But when I searched his house: no pictures."

"You didn't know to be looking for anything," Bauer said before Carter could start blaming himself for having missed something. "Torchwood's examined all of the known attacks, and it seems that the 114 are getting smarter. In the Vegas attack, one of the cell members was a nineteen year old college student. Turns out this 'student' had been in place for _six years_. Had adoption records, report cards, even a juvie conviction for petty vandalism, all backed up with accounts from reliable witnesses. Gwen said he, or it, must have been inserted as a runaway teen into an orphanage, and just _grew_ into position - they can fake aging, or they genuinely age; we aren't sure which." Bauer shifted a little in his seat. "Gwen figures it's only a matter of time until they crack the 'no-viable-offspring' problem, or start sending whole families as units: we're going on the assumption that one day the profile will be useless."

"My God!" said Carter, thinking through the implications.

"Yeah," said Bauer. "The last thing we want is to get into a situation where the balloon goes up and suddenly we have key people in our fight against the 114 turn out to _be_ 114\. So that's why we're testing people in sensitive positions: anyone cleared enough to know about the 114 or Torchwood is tested. That includes the President, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, key members of Congress like Senator Wen, your General Mansfield…all the way down to the highest cleared people at certain vital facilities, such as Eureka." He turned completely to face Carter. "That's why it's called Priority. If we went somewhere, say a SAC base, to hunt a 114 cell, our first 'priority' would be to find the terrorists by testing everyone who fit the profile; that's Priority One. _While we're there,_ we would also test the base commander, his XO, and at least the senior officers in charge of nuclear weapons. They would be Priority Two. Normally, we would test the Priority Twos _after_ stopping the cell, but there's just so damn many of you here, it was easier to start with the Twos and work our way outward." It was true: with the additions of Sheriff Carter and Dr. Donovan – and Dr. Parrish – there were now _eighty-three_ people in Eureka with sufficient clearance to fall into the Priority Two category. Even this Dr. Drummer fellow they were on their way to visit was Priority Two.

"And it goes up to Four?" Carter asked, looking to Bauer for confirmation.

"Priority Three is the general population," Bauer said, nodding. "We'll only test them if we run out of Priority Ones before finding the remaining cell members. Priority Four are those we rule out from testing due to them being excluded by the current profile." He reached over, tapping Carter's arm. "Like, we wouldn't have wasted time testing you and Dr. Blake earlier," Bauer said. "We know you're both parents. But Priority Two trumps all the other categories." He turned back to facing forward. "This case is our first chance to test the screening methodology on a large scale, so we're still working out the bugs," he admitted. "But you're right; it is counter-intuitive and could cause confusion in a stressful situation. I'm going to make sure to mention it in my after-action report," Bauer said, smiling again at Carter.

"Huh," said Carter.

"Yep," said Bauer.

A silent moment went by.

"…So Tess has a gun now," said Carter.

"She carries," confirmed Bauer. "We all do, even the support folks like her and House." It was true: Gwen insisted that all Torchwood operatives be qualified for potentially dangerous situations.

"She any…good with it?" Carter asked.

"…She carries," Bauer repeated.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

The 114 leaned over the dashboard to get a better look at the guard post. The small outbuilding was big enough to have obviously housed two guards, but there was still only one guard on duty. The alien decided to wait a few minutes, just to make sure a second guard wasn't off doing his rounds or sitting on the toilet, but it knew that, due to the reduction of GD's operational budget, almost none of the other off-site labs rated even one security guard any more, let alone two. The 114 remembered its human alter ego being quite angry at the time over the cuts to _her_ own department.

If it had been capable of doing so, the 114 would have smiled at the irony.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

As Carter pulled his jeep into the parking lot outside of the superphoton generator's control facility, he immediately saw a crowd of techs standing around an olive drab flatbed utility truck. He also saw a scientist he recognized.

"Dr. Drummer," said Carter, as he and Bauer were getting out of the jeep, "are you alright?" Carter was looking at Drummer, who seemed to have a bandage wrapped around his right hand. He glanced at Bauer, whose expression indicated that he too had noticed Drummer's hand. "I thought you said there weren't any injuries," Carter said to the scientist.

"Oh, Sheriff, thank you for coming," said Drummer. He was holding his right hand in his left. Drummer jerked his head toward the truck. "No, somebody did that last night." The left rear bumper of the truck was smashed in and hanging off. "I called it in right after I arrived this morning; of course, I realize that you've had more important matters to attend to these past couple of days," Drummer said, with a knowing nod to Carter. He held up his injured hand. "This happened because I did something stupid. I thought I saw a fleck of paint inside the taillight, so I reached in to get it. I forgot that this vehicle is old enough to be exempt from the laws mandating safety glass for the lights." He smiled ruefully. He also turned his hand a bit, and Carter could see a red spot where blood had seeped through the bandage. "I believe I nicked an artery."

"Ouch!" said Carter.

"Let me take a look at that," said Bauer. "I have field medic training."

"Oh!" said Carter. "Dr. Noah Drummer, this is Jack Bauer," he said, indicating the Torchwood operative. "He's one of the liaisons from the DoD helping us with the _Astreus_ investigation." Carter didn't say any more; while Dr. Drummer was cleared for the Torchwood secret, none of his assistants were.

"Charmed," said Drummer, this time directing his knowing expression toward Bauer, quickly shaking left hands with the agent before presenting his right.

Bauer was already unwrapping the gauze and looking at Drummer's cut. Carter saw him scrutinize the wound, his face wrapped up in a fretting gaze. Bauer shared a look with Carter. _He's wondering if Drummer did this on purpose to cheat Tess' test_ , the sheriff realized. After a few more seconds, however, Bauer began rewrapping the gauze, albeit more competently than the scientist had done before.

"You should get that looked at in the Infirmary," Carter said as Bauer finished. "It could get infected."

"I don't want to waste any of Allison's valuable time," said Drummer. "She has enough to worry about."

"Go to our doctor, then," said Bauer. "Dr. House. Tell him I sent you."

"Yes," said one of Drummer's assistants, who turned and mouthed a big _Thank you!_ to Bauer and Carter. "I'll drive you." The woman pulled out a set of keys and dragged Drummer halfway to a station wagon before the scientist could object.

"Well, alright," said Drummer, as he realized he wasn't going to win the argument. Then he stopped and turned back to Carter. "But Sheriff, that still leaves the matter of the accident report," he said, pointing back to his truck. "And the intruder."

"What?" Carter and Bauer said simultaneously.

"Well, the two matters are obviously connected," said Drummer, who turned to Bauer. "Global Dynamics' company insurance policies are exceedingly comprehensive. That truck is only used for maintenance runs up the hill to the superphoton generator, so it's 100% covered as a company vehicle. Whoever struck it wouldn't have to worry about paying for any of the repairs; in fact, it's likely that the repairs to _their_ vehicle would be covered as well, provided they notified the owner, the authorities, or in some other way attested to their culpability. Therefore, whoever caused the accident must be an outside agent."

Bauer was skeptical. "So some idiot does a hit-and-run on your truck, and you think it's the Chinese just because they didn't leave a note?" he asked.

"Actually, it's more likely to be the North Koreans; they're our most active threat," said Drummer. "But the point is, as Sheriff Carter can tell you, filing a claim after an accident is exponentially more challenging if you don't have the name of the other party. Anyone who lived in Eureka would know this. So again, the only reasonable assumption is that my truck was damaged by someone who is not a Eureka resident, and is here without authorization for some nefarious purpose."

"Or it was kids," said Carter, who had so far stayed out of the discussion. He pointed to an access road which went past the parking lot and up a hill. "Tesla High's 'Makeout Point' is about a mile that way," he said. "I raised a teenage daughter here," he added, when Bauer turned to look at him.

"I hear you," said Bauer.

"Look, Noah," Carter continued, "Jack and I will file the police report on your truck, okay? That'll help with the insurance. Then you can take it to Henry, who will have it fixed up in no time. But for now, please," he implored, "go to the Infirmary."

"Fine," said Drummer, though he was less than enthused about the idea. He went back to his assistant's car and opened the passenger door. As she started the engine, he muttered, "I'll say this: someone is getting a lump of coal in their stocking this year."

Bauer watched the car drive off, and all of the other techs went back inside the control building. He turned to say something to Carter, and saw the sheriff was back at his jeep, getting something out of the back. He went over to help, and was surprised to see that it was a camera and some measuring equipment. He realized belatedly that the equipment Carter was getting was the kind used in documenting accident reports.

"We're really going to do this?" he asked as he opened up the camera case. "Document a fender-bender?"

"Welcome to small-town policing!" said Carter with a smile.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Dr. Wyman wasn't someone who'd be called a "people person." His first two weeks at Eureka, he'd had to resort to crib notes to keep track of coworkers' names. Even after he had been promoted to lead the Department of Planetary Defense, he would often confuse the names of the people who worked under him. So he was not overly concerned when he couldn't immediately place the woman he saw walking up the path to his building's front door. He also was more focused on how the thirtysomething blonde woman was walking, which somehow seemed off. He got up from his desk and walked over to the door to let her in.

"Dr. Leonardo!" he said, finally remembering who she was as he held the electronic door open for her. He was about to ask her if she was okay, or drunk, when he realized that Eureka's chief botanist wasn't cleared for the work his department did. "What are you doing here?" he asked, probably a little more confrontationally than he should have. _After all,_ he thought, _the guard let her through, didn't he?_

That was the last fully coherent thought Dr. Wyman had time to make, as the next thing that crossed his mind was pain. He looked down, and saw that Leonardo's arm had turned into some kind of green, flat sword, and that that sword was embedded in the right side of his abdomen. He instinctively grabbed at it, but Leonardo was able to pull it out and stab him again, this time a little higher in his ribcage. She jammed the sword-arm in, until Wyman stopped struggling, then angled her arm down and let him slide off of it. That's when she heard the chirp of the door closing.

The 114, until today known to its friends as "Dr. Maria Leonardo," looked at the door, and then down at Wyman. It knew that it probably should have waited until it got inside the building before it transformed to combat mode, but the human scientist had blocked its forward progress. With no regret at all, the 114 turned toward the outside keypad, ripping the housing off and examining the wires within.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Carter stopped the jeep long enough for Bauer to hop out, and then rolled back into traffic so he could return to GD and check in. The two men had completed the investigation of Dr. Drummer's accident, and then driven back to town as no other calls had come in. Bauer had asked the sheriff to take him back to the town square, so he could pick up the second Torchwood truck and bring it back to the inn. As he was fishing the keys out of his pocket, he caught sight of someone he recognized sitting on a park bench in the median.

"Tess?" Bauer said, after he had walked over to her. "Heard you got into it with some of the locals today," he said, sitting down next to her after she acknowledged him with a nod.

"Eric Washington was my friend," said Tess, and Bauer could see that she had been crying, though she had wiped away her tears by this point. She continued staring straight ahead. "He was my deputy director when I was here with Section Five," she explained. "He was my Roy – my Adam - here," she corrected, for Bauer's sake. She stifled a sob. "He was so loyal! I recommended him to take my place, but he didn't know that. When I left for Australia, I did it so…abruptly," she admitted, holding back a smile, "…that a rumor got started that I'd been fired." She turned to Jack. "He refused to accept the promotion. I had to call him from the airport, and threaten to come back and kick his ass if he didn't take the job!" She was smiling now, but the smile quickly went away. "If I hadn't, he would be alive now."

"Tess, _stop_ ," Bauer said forcefully. "You can't go down that road."

Tess snorted. "What does it matter?" she asked. "He's gone, and now Roy's gone, and Ken's gone, and suddenly there's you, and Adam…" she stopped, putting her head in her hands.

Bauer sat back. He'd been wondering how Tess was taking the devastating events of the past few weeks. She'd been the only member of Torchwood Seven not there when the Russians attacked their headquarters and killed Caftan and Ryan. Gwen had warned him Tess was close to both men. So far, she'd been nothing but professional to him and Adam, but Bauer knew that the emotional trauma had to be severe, especially for someone not used to seeing death in combat. And coming to Eureka, where her old friends were being put in danger, was not helping matters any.

"I didn't want to bring you on this mission," Bauer told her.

"What?!" she said, sitting back up.

"You're too emotionally attached to the situation. I told Gwen it was a bad idea, but she insisted we needed an Indian guide to this place, and there were things here we could get and bring back to Torchwood that only you would know about."

"Wow," Tess said. "Your bedside manner is about on par with Greg's," she added.

"It's not about 'bedside manner,' or hurt feelings!" said Bauer, this time rounding on Tess and grabbing her by the arm. When she looked down at his hand and tried to pull away, he relaxed and released her, but he continued his lecture. "It's about _focus_ ," he said in a hoarse whisper. "Focus is what you need to have. Because we are in a combat theatre here." He swept his arm around at the town. "There has been one confirmed attack and there are three hostiles still active. They are carrying out operations against us _right now_. You need to focus on that, and nothing else. You cannot afford feelings or anything else that degrades your ability to attend to the situation at hand. Inattention gets you dead." He stood up and looked around in all directions. "There could be a sniper in one of those windows, drawing a bead on us right now…" he said, stopping his rant when the arm he was using to point nearly hit a woman walking by. Bauer muttered a quick apology to the woman, who began to walk a lot faster away from him.

"Okay, Jack, Jesus!" said Tess. "I get it!" She scoffed at him. "Honestly, do you have to be so melodramatic about –"

A loud explosion cut her off, as it made the ground shake and knocked many people in the square off their feet, including the unlucky pedestrian Bauer had nearly decked a few moments before. Several secondary explosions followed, but fortunately they were not as powerful, and anyone still standing was able maintain their footing, including Jack and Tess. Everyone looked up, and a plume of fire and smoke could be seen rising into the twilight sky from somewhere a few miles outside of town.

Bauer and Tess looked at each other, then both took off on a dead run to the Torchwood truck.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	11. Shadows on a Cave Wall

Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 11: Shadows on a Cave Wall

 _Present day…_

"Will he be okay?" Tess asked. She and Gwen were walking toward Torchwood's elevator, having left the science lab.

"Adam?" Gwen asked. "He'll be fine." When they reached the elevator, Gwen pressed the down button. "Bet you've never seen so many Brits in one place before?" Gwen asked as they stepped inside.

"Uh…actually, I presented a paper at the Royal Astronomical Society a few years ago," said Tess.

"Oh," said Gwen, nonplussed at Tess' reaction to her joke. She switched subjects as they reached their destination and left the elevator. "Retcon doesn't erase memories; it walls them off."

After looking around, Tess caught up to the conversation. "Hmm?"

"The person who invented retcon told me that that's how it works. Because memories are strengthened by their interconnections, and they are reinforced each time they're tweaked by a connected memory. Retcon works because it isolates the targeted memories, and allows them to wither and die. That's why we've been showing you around: we were hoping you would remember something, and that that something would allow you to remember other things." Gwen turned to Tess. "Sometimes, retcon fails because someone remembers something that activates a lot of memories at once, like a traumatic or emotional event, and that causes it all to come flooding back. Of course, the longer you go on, the less likely that is to happen. After about three months, the odds of your memories coming back approach statistical insignificance."

"Oh," said Tess. Then she turned to Gwen. "Was I the person who invented retcon?" she asked.

"What? No!" said Gwen. "That was my old boss from Cardiff. Though the 'statistical insignificance' bit does sound like you, right?" she said with a smile.

"Huh," said Tess.

"That's part of the reason we… _recovered_ you when we did. You were approaching the end of the three-month window. Plus, I saw your ticket to New York was open ended." Gwen looked at Tess.

"I had a job interview at SUNY tomorrow, and I was hoping to work in time to surprise my parents in Boston!" Tess protested. "I was trying to leave myself plenty of leeway. I didn't want to have to pay a change fee; just the one-way flight was over seven hundred dollars!"

"I'll reimburse you for the ticket," Gwen mumbled.

"Am I ever going to get my memories back?" Tess lamented, putting her head into her hands. "I don't remember any of this!"

"It is proving to be vexing," Gwen said, putting a consoling arm around Tess. "Retcon fails from time to time. I think we had a bad batch a while back. But the one time we _need_ it to fail…" Gwen cocked her head at her former subordinate.

"Bad batch?" Tess asked. "Where do you get it from, Vulcan Costco?"

"The stuff we use now, we buy from UNIT. We gave them the formula when we were back in Cardiff. They sell it to us as needed."

"That can't be cheap," said Tess.

Gwen smiled. "You have seen your lab, right?" she said. "Your government wanted me to set up Torchwood Seven on their paradigm: a field office of twenty to thirty agents, support staff…They gave us the budget for that," she explained. "We have five people. Six, back when you were here. I put the extra money into equipment. By the way, wait until you see your paycheck," Gwen added. "You're welcome."

Tess did a double take.

"I have to pay you people a decent wage, or I risk losing you to the private sector," Gwen said. "That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." She smiled. "You're all generously compensated…except Bauer," she added, her face turning sour. "Someone in your government really has it in for him. They erased all of his government seniority; I pay him the same as a third-year civil servant." She winked at Tess. "So we pick up his rent and he drives a 'company car,'" she said, making air-quotes as she did.

Tess took all this in as she walked. "Wait," she said, stopping. "Ortiz and his team. You said you keep them on retainer."

"Yes," said Gwen. "I thought I explained that."

"Even with money," Tess continued, "you're not going to keep them on retainer indefinitely. The government bureaucracy won't _let_ you keep them on retainer unless they're doing something, or fulfilling some purpose. And unless you've got astrophysicists tied up in warehouses all over the city, or you think that maybe, one day three months from now, you might need to kidnap a former employee –" she rounded on Gwen. "You said you sent them because you guys were busy," she stated. "That implies that kidnapping scientists is not part of their regular duties. So what is?"

Gwen sighed. "You are not going to let that kidnapping thing go, are you?"

"What do you do when retcon fails?" Tess asked, the horror of a realization coming to her face. "You said Ortiz and his men do 'cleanup.' Why do you call them 'Jack's thugs?' What does Ortiz 'clean up?'"

"They help us cover up the alien attacks," Gwen said bluntly. "But not all aliens are hostile," Gwen quickly added. "Some of them are just tourists who've gotten lost. But for the most part, as you've apparently guessed, the _cleanup team_ helps us with keeping the secret of alien visitation. We don't let them see the aliens, but they help us by staging car accidents and the like so we can hide any human victims. Plus they surveil witnesses, especially those we've retconned, so we can know if we need to come out and do a re-dose."

"My God!" said Tess.

"I mean, there's a lot of scut-work involved in sanitizing an alien encounter. If you stage a one-car accident, someone needs to acquire a car, then fake the wreck damage…they're really good at that. Sometimes, you have to fake credit card transactions to put someone in a place where we're staging an accident, but we can usually do that ourselves. But they help us with the really boring stuff. And they know not to ask questions."

"What gives you the right?" Tess practically shouted.

Gwen just looked at her. "In those reports Jack gave you, did you happen to see the one about the _greb_?" Gwen asked.

"Greb?" Tess asked.

"G-R-B," Gwen said, "Generic Reptilian Being. Happened about a month after you left." Then she thought a moment. "Sorry, ' _Giant_ Reptilian Being.' I can never remember that." She shook her head. "Either way, it's more politically correct than our original name for it, which was 'Shadowdevil _._ '"

Tess was still angry, but she did look askance at Gwen.

" _Bauer_ came up with that one!" Gwen said, a surprised smile on her face, as if she still couldn't believe her second-in-command's poetic sensibility. "He was first on the scene," she explained, "and I asked him over the radio to describe the creature to me. He said, 'Remember that scene in _The Exorcist_ where the demon comes out of Linda Blair, but all you see is its shadow? Think of _that_.'" She made a little laugh, then her face became completely serious. "It had come in through the rift, materialized inside a small church. Fortunately, it was night, so there were only three victims: a priest, an old woman praying the rosary, and a caretaker. By the time Jack had got there, it was all over." She shook her head. "Greg did the autopsy on the thing. He was the one who figured out that it couldn't breathe our air. It didn't kill those people out of some sick, twisted need for mayhem: it had detected the hemoglobin in their blood, and was desperately trying to splash it against its gills. Jack didn't need to put it down; it suffocated." She paused. "Fortunately for us, the caretaker had a DUI arrest from twenty years ago on his record. We took their bodies out to Reseda, Ortiz and his team smashed up the caretaker's truck, we put the bodies in it, Adam hacked the coroner's database and trebled the recorded blood alcohol content…" Gwen was ticking off items on her fingers.

"You can't do that!" Tess exclaimed. "What about that man's family? All of their families? What gives you the right?" she repeated.

Gwen just took a jaded breath. "Do you want to be the one who explains to the caretaker's four year old daughter that her Da-Da died screaming, in agony and terror, with the last thing he ever saw being something that looked for all the world like every Western depiction of the Devil since Milton? Would you tell that to the old woman's grandchildren? The priest's parents? Would you?"

Tess was silent. She was looking at Gwen in shock, but she turned away, not sure what to say.

"We're here," said Gwen, walking the few remaining steps to the end of the hallway.

Tess looked up. There was a door, secured with a keypad. Gwen made to enter a code, but then stopped.

"Maybe I should let you try it," she suggested. "What with the shock you had from seeing Adam's implant, and that knock on your head, maybe that shook some memories loose," she said to Tess. "You were still here when we upgraded the system, right after Jack and Adam came onboard," Gwen shrugged. "You learned all the new codes, just like the rest of us."

Tess stepped up to the keypad. She raised her arm, because she thought she felt a twinge of familiarity, but whatever déjà vu she was experiencing quickly dissipated. She turned to Gwen and shook her head. "I don't remember," she said. She stepped back and Gwen stepped forward. _If it's "1-2-3-4,"_ Tess thought, _I'm going to feel really stupid._

It wasn't. The code Gwen entered was five digits, and the first one was a seven. The door slid open, and the two women walked inside. Again, Tess examined her surroundings.

"These are holding cells!" Tess noted. The room had about eight clear cubicle shaped cells, walled off with transparent but strong plexiglass, with four on each side of an open central area.

"Aye," said Gwen, "and that's a Weevil." She pointed behind Tess.

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Fred Porter was halfway through enjoying his day off. He'd gotten in nine holes, and was currently walking through the house, eventually finding his wife in the family room.

"Jacqui, what time did the exterminators say they were coming?"

Jacqueline Porter took off her glasses and looked up from her laptop. "He said late afternoon. Maybe even after four. He said he has a few appointments to squeeze in before us." The Porters were having trouble with ants in their laundry room again.

"Good," said Fred. "I've got time to cut the grass before they get here."

"Remember, I've got to head back to the office at two, then pick up the boys," Jacqueline said, glancing at the clock on her computer. "So you'll need to stay home and wait." She turned back to her work. But as her husband was leaving the room, she called out to him. "Fred?"

"Yes?"

"When you're outside, and I'm not here, can you make sure to keep the garage door closed, please?"

"Honey," said Fred, "I'm going to be right outside."

"Fred, I mean when you're in the back, or in the side yard," his wife said. "You put those headphones on, and get lost in your 'zone.' Someone could walk right in and clean us out."

Inwardly, Fred Porter sighed. Ever since Jacqueline's brother had been burglarized a few years back, she had become paranoid about keeping the house secure. "Jacqui," he said, "There's no way someone's going to sneak past me and break into our house while I'm cutting the grass. In fact, seeing that the garage door is open in the middle of the day with the car inside is going to convince them that someone is home." _Now, if I went to Cabo for seven days and forgot to lock the front door like your idiot brother,_ he thought, _then we might have a problem._

"I know, honey," Jacqueline said. "It's just that we got three strange calls this morning. Two of them, they waited through the entire message before hanging up, and the third time, I answered the phone, but they didn't say anything, just listened to me for a whole minute." Her voice sped up as she started to get a little more agitated at her husband's indifference. "That's one of their tricks: they case out houses by calling to see who's home in the middle of the day and who isn't."

"No, dear," said Porter facetiously, "that's called _telemarketing_. It's been known to occur from time to time." He grabbed a set of headphones that had been lying on top of the refrigerator. "You worry too much about things that will never happen," he added, walking over and kissing the top of his wife's head. "Everything'll be fine."

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"Calm down, Alice!" Gwen said, rapping twice more on the front pane of the Weevil's cage. "It's Tess! Tess! You know her!" she added, as the creature quieted and backed away from the plastic. She turned to her companion and helped her up off the floor. "It's your new hair," Gwen said, pointing to her own coif. "Alice doesn't like change."

For her part, Tess hadn't said a word since she'd turned around and seen the Weevil with its face pressed up against the Plexiglas, trying to sniff at her through the tiny air holes in the cage. Instead, she had screamed, which had set off the Weevil into throwing itself against the plastic pane and scaring her into falling backwards. As she stood up, Tess could see that the creature was humanoid, but definitely not human, even though it was wearing clothes. She also saw that someone had affixed a small piece of white masking tape to the cell, with the name "ALICE" written in black sharpie on it. She moved up closer to the cell, with the Weevil mirroring her approach, the two of them warily staring at each other through the plastic.

"To be fair, though," Gwen was continuing, "you were never her favorite to begin with, with all your tests and whatnot. How's your arm, by the way?" she asked nonchalantly.

It took Tess a moment to react to what Gwen had said. When she did, she immediately reached down and pulled back the sleeve over her left forearm, the sudden movement startling Alice a little. But Tess did not notice. Instead, she was focused on the three very faint scratches on her arm. They had nearly healed completely, but they were still visible as thin white lines.

She had first noticed the scratches in the shower one day about three months ago. It had puzzled her how they had gotten there. She eventually figured that she had either cut herself unpacking one of the many cardboard boxes she had left over from her move from Australia, or maybe she had struck an end table while tossing and turning in her sleep; it didn't matter. What mattered was that, as she held her arm up to the plastic, the scratches matched up perfectly in their spacing with the three non-opposable digits on the Weevil's right paw.

Tess looked up at Gwen, her mouth open in shock. "Why did you bring me down here?" she asked, when she was finally able to speak.

"To help you remember," Gwen answered. "Anything yet?" she asked, pointing to her head. "Strong negative emotions like fear are the best for overcoming retcon."

"You…you did this just to scare me into remembering?" Tess asked incredulously.

"Well," said Gwen, "it was either this, or put Greg under a white sheet and have him jump out and say 'boo!'" She gave a wry smile, "Of course, once Jack explained to me what a white sheet _means_ on this side of the pond, I realized that this was the better plan."

"What kind of person does that?" Tess asked. "What gives you the _right_?"

"I have the _responsibility_ to protect this planet! We all do here at Torchwood!" Gwen said, the casual demeanor she had been exhibiting the past few minutes slipping. "And if, in order to accomplish that mission, I might have to slap a certain prima donna ex-employee out of her 'comfort level,' I sure as hell will and won't bat an eye doing it!" Gwen stopped, and took a breath, calming herself. "I'm sorry," Gwen said, in response to Tess' stunned look, "you didn't deserve that. Stress," she said, giving a tiny smile.

Tess was still shocked, but she had started to recover her wits. "Wait…what do you mean, 'prima donna?'"

"Forget I said anything," Gwen said quickly. She sighed, and ran her hand through her hair. She took another deep breath.

"Look," Gwen said, "would you like to see why we couldn't come pick you up ourselves? Would you like to see what's been keeping us all so busy today?"

 _ **Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


End file.
